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...

Fair, But Not Equal

So tonight we had a discipline issue at our house.  After getting in trouble, Boy #1 said something about his brother to the effect of, “He never gets in trouble for doing this, but I always do.”  Now we often have trouble with Boy #1 with this...

Spring Break Ideas for Moms

It’s Spring Break season…If you are not planning on making a trip to some warm, tropical getaway during the week of Spring Break, think about some of the things you’ve been wanting to take the time to teach the kids.  Consider also some of the places...

Growing Grateful Kids

I’ve had the privilege of getting to know a wonderful mom from Minnesota.  Susie Larson first spoke at a Hearts at Home conference several years ago.  We connected as speakers first, but quickly found out that we had alot in common as moms.Susie has...

Life is changing…

Last weekend was the first time I ever went shopping for an outfit to wear for the upcoming Hearts at Home conference without having one of my daughters weigh in on the decision.  Two weeks ago we moved Erica down to Augusta, Georgia, to be near Kendall at Ft....