Happy Birthday, Austin!

 At 6am this morning we awoke to get our birthday celebration of cake and ice cream for breakfast started! Funny…6am is just about the same time I was awakened by labor pains 14 years ago. In fact, today I was thinking about how birth is an appropriate...

Parent Strategy: Contracts for Teens

When my kids were little we used chore charts with stars to motivate and hold our kids accountable to carry out their home responsibilities.As they’ve grown older, we found the need for a new strategy.  And with our two teens at home, we’ve found that...

Re-Post: Be a Yes Mom!

Last summer I ran this post on being a “yes” mom.  Because I personally need the challenge once again, I’m re-posting it for this July!Last week my boys ran inside and said, “Mom, mom…it’s so hot outside! Can we see if...

Grammy Camp and other great ideas!

I received this email last week:Hi, Jill!You’ve asked for fun summer ideas–I want to share this one with you! Each summer, my parents host their grandkids for “cousin camp.” They just go to my parents’ house and have a ton of fun. Right...

Parenting Strategies That Work

Mark and I have been working with our teenage sons this summer on the concept of “freedoms.”  We recently sat down with the boys and had a discussion about how we use our time.  We discussed three categories that our activities fall into:Things...

Anne’s First-time mom posts

Dear Anne,You have now entered into a new season of life.  Motherhood will be the most important job you’ll ever have.  There are so many things that I long to share with you: lessons your dad and I learned the hard way, strategies we learned from everyday...

What’s your Summer Strategy?

The days of summer are upon us.  For those of us with school-age children it means change.  I always look forward to that time with both excitement and uncertainty.  Just how will we fill our hours and our days?   Several years ago I...

A Boy and His Boat

After adopting Kolya at the age of 9, we soon realized this young man thrived with a hammer in his hand.  He loved anything to do with creating, fixing, or building.We also discovered several years ago this same boy loves to fish.  Everytime we’d go to...

Home as a Research Lab

A couple of weeks ago I sat in a concert watching my 23-year-old son’s band make beautiful music.  I leaned over to the mom sitting next to me (whose son was playing guitar in the band) and said, “Wow, this makes all those music lessons worth it,...

It’s a Girl!

Rilyn Grace McClane7 lbs. 6 ozApril 26, 20101:40pmMother and baby are doing great! 

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...

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...

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...

Don’t Make a Mountain out of a Molehill

So after school today one of my son’s friends told him that I was the coolest mom ever.  Why?  Because I didn’t get mad when Austin somewhat inconvenienced me.Now I can tell you that there have been many times that I didn’t handle that kind...