When I was a little girl, my family moved across the country. It was also the year my first little sister was born. I was in kindergarten, so it was also probably the year I learned to read and write. I lost my first tooth as we drove across the country. It was a big...
2023 Recap
Happy New Year, my friends! This past year has been a doozy for me and my family. This new year feels like a new start, as the sun peeks over the horizon and chases the shadows away. This past year I spent a lot of time in physical therapy for my knee (which I had...
24 Christmas Picture Books for Advent!
Charlotte shares a Christmas Advent tradition from her family: reading a Christmas picture book every night. She shares some of her favorites in this video. Book Links: The Spider Who Saved Christmas Long Ago on a Silent Night Frozen Olaf's Night Before Christmas ...
Advent for Families: 3 Ways
A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.The advent season is upon us. I love it. One of my favorite traditions we have as a family is to place all our Christmas picture books under the Christmas tree and all month, those...
Find Beauty in the Humblest Things
We are entering the busiest season of the year for activities, school, special occasions, and family get-togethers. I love Christmas and Thanksgiving and family time. The business of it all can sometimes get to be just too much. Here's a simple reminder from Louisa...
October Updates and News
Is it really October already?
I feel like time is rushing past me these past several months, with my recovery from surgery (if you missed that story, read it here.) and all the appointments and school activities with the kids. I am feeling pretty good these days, although I am still not back to my old self. When I start doing physical activities, I don’t usually last longer than a few minutes before my stomach reminds me that I just had surgery and I need to stop.
An Unexpected Miracle
This last month has been unexpected in a bad way. We were planning one more family trip before school started to Lake Tahoe, Yosemite National Park, Sequoia National Park, and King's Canyon National Park. One week before it was time to leave, I found myself in...
The Last Rays of Summer…
It’s been a summer. Pool time. Lazy reading time. There was a lot of cleaning up after three children and feeding them and ALL the things.
I even missed my newsletter last month because, well, summer.
But I’m back and ready to get to work. I’ll be dropping kids off at school in a few weeks, and suddenly — or finally — I can take a whole hour in a row and do some work.
Children Connection
June is here, and it's good to talk to you again. Thank you for being a reader of my monthly newsletter! It’s no secret I love children. I want the children I interact with to be better for the experience of meeting me. I taught preschool for six years and have...
The most important work
Welcome to May! How can it be May already? I don’t know. I have a busy month ahead, with my youngest graduating preschool this year, and my oldest moving out of elementary into intermediate school (which is just the other side of the school building, thank goodness!...
Sharing is Caring: How Stories Can Build Connections
So, why create? Besides the joy of making something that came from your head and hands, we create to connect with other people. How do people make connections with other people? By sharing truth with them. It could be a personal story or a passed-on story that we have seen proven, or even a made-up story that proves the truth we have seen in our own life. We share these things with each other and suddenly, there it is, connection.
A true story…
The best arguments in the world won’t change a person’s mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.I’ve been listening to a new podcast (not new in general, it’s actually from 2018, but new to me). It is called You Are A Storyteller. It is two screenwriters...