Do I have any Florida Blog Friends?

Mark and I are excited to be part of the Focus on the Family “Celebrate Family” Tour.  We’ll be at the Orlando, Florida, event on Wednesday, May 19. If you live close enough to come to the Orlando event, we’d love to meet you! ...

Every Mom Can Be a Homeschooling Mom

As I shared in Tuesday’s post, we’ve homeschooled off and on over the years.  Right now both of my teenagers are attending public school so I’m not on official homeschooling mom.  But I still take the education of my kids very...

Focus on the Family WEBCAST Today!

Today I’ll be joining the discussion on the weekly Focus on the Family live webcast for moms!This time, however, I’ll be doing so from the comfort of my home and the technology of Skype!  The topic of the one hour show will be “Family...

School Choices

I’m often asked by other moms about our school choices with our kids.  There’s no easy answer to that question because we’ve done it all: homeschool, public school, private school and even lab school (here in our community Illinois State...

Marriage Monday: Making It Through Tough Times

When Mark and I speak together on marriage, we introduce ourselves as being married “27 years…17 of them happily.”  It’s a description we wish weren’t true, but unfortunately it is.  Our marriage has had plenty of ups and downs....

What’s for dinner tonight?

I’m trying something new these days.  I’m trying to begin dinner plans at breakfast.  I have a loose schedule for meals, but I find that I serve a more well-rounded meal when I think through my meal plan and start my prep first thing in the...

Wednesday’s Words of Encouragement: Money Management for Kids

Money Management for Kidsby Jill SavageEvery child has their own financial personality. Three of our children are savers. Two are spenders. Of course, they take after both my husband and me, who sit at opposite ends of the spending/saving spectrum ourselves.Regardless...

Ultimate Blog Party

Wow!  I have a couple of friends who have turned me on to the Ultimate Blog Party 2010 at 5MINUTESFORMOM.COM.  This has been so much fun because I’ve been meeting so many wonderful moms and discovering some great new mom blogs! Not only that, but...

Marriage Monday: We’re wonderfully incompatible!

Today I’m starting what I hope to be a weekly feature on my blog: Marriage Monday.  Mark and I speak and write together about marriage.  Each Monday we’ll share about a common marriage struggle and how we’ve learned to handle it.  You...

Living With Less…when planning a wedding!

A mom stopped me last summer after reading a newspaper article that stated the average cost of a wedding was now $25,000. “Jill, did you read that article about the cost of weddings these days?” I replied that I had seen the article to which she referred. She...

Friday’s Quote of the Week

“Let your children see you perform seemingly random, yet purposefully planned, acts of kindness.  Then invite them to join you in the...

The Fresh Start of Easter

I love Easter. It is the cornerstone celebration of the Christian faith. Sure, Christmas is pretty important, but if that baby boy didn’t die on the cross for you and for me, we would not have direct access to God each and every day.  And we would...