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To Homeschool or not to Homeschool
To homeschool or not to homeschool, that is the question! Whether it is nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of playground bullies, or to take up workbooks against the common core and by opposing – teach common sense. Oh to wonder no more, and by making a decision, to say we end the heartache of forever scarring our children by choosing incorrectly. . . Okay, that Hamlet allusion was probably only amusing me. My students either loved or dreaded Shakespeare units. I always started with a Monty Python-esque British accent and Hamlet’s soliloquy, attempting to inspire them to love the bard. As a dedicated public school teacher for 17…
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What Mom did while you were sleeping . . .
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Fewer Toys make Happier Kids
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Even Superheroes Need Breaks
The first thing I learned about being a mom is how terrifying it is to love someone this impossibly much. The second thing I learned is that there is no such thing as rested moms. I’m exhausted by dinnertime every night. Sometimes, I hide in the bathroom to get five minutes of peace and quiet. The only break I get is the one I make, and sometimes there simply isn’t a break. When Chobani asked women to think about someone in your life that needs a break, I immediately thought about my best friend, Kaitlin, whose whole life has been an emergency for almost three years. Being a mom is…
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The Last Night You Were 4: Birthday Milestones
Turning five is one of the hardest birthday milestones for us mommas as much as it a celebration for our children. Five marks the age children move away from infancy to school age and take their first steps into the world. It was also the hardest birthday for me as mom. A few days after her 5th birthday, I emailed this “The Last Night You Were 4” letter to my daughter that I wrote at midnight on her birthday. She has an email address waiting for her to grow up, full of pictures, stories, cute sayings and letters like this. (Heaven not Harvard shares links as a participant in affiliate…
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Are your Expectations Ruining your Life?
Expectations are sneaky buggers. They are often so engrained into our ideas of normal that we forget we have them at all. We have all these cultural expectations that we don’t even question. For example, think about the 4th of July. Most Americans immediately picture patriotic picnics and hotdogs on the grill. If our day looks different, we can feel a little let down. And when these ingrained expectations aren’t met, we can experience real costs in our lives. I sometimes don’t even realize I had expectations until I find myself disappointed. And then I’m upset, angry, sad, etc. because I set myself up for failure. My expectations were ruining…
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Rejected Rock or Cornerstone
Do you ever feel rejected? I have been really struggling with rejection the past few weeks: gossip, slander, unkind messages, ignored phone calls. Praying and working through this issue, I’ve realized feeling rejected has colored on the canvas of my entire life (but I’m in good company). I remember being happy and confident as a child. Then the first day of kindergarten, I somehow didn’t fit. I was called cruel names. No one asked me to play during recess. A cruel boy ruined my new ‘cowboy’ boots in second grade when I left them in the coat room. I was rejected and bullied mercilessly throughout elementary and middle school. Sophomore…
