A Day in the Life
When I was once a part of the 9-5 business world, there was a time I followed the adage, "Don't dress for the job you have, dress for the job you want." So lately I've been thinking maybe I should start dressing like a jazz dancer. Or an art gallery/gift shop owner...or anything other than a work-at-home mom... ;)

The (Almond) Joys of Parenting
Ahh, the simple pleasures of being a parent on Halloween-- at the end of the evening, we get all the candy rejects our kids don’t want. This year, out of Emmie’s massive collection of 130 pieces of candy, I was given 1 mini Almond Joy, 4 mini boxes of Milk Duds, 2 pieces of banana Laffy Taffy (NOT the strawberry, of course, which I really would have enjoyed), 4 packs of Whoppers malted milk balls, 1 butterscotch candy, 1 peppermint, 1 Rolo, and a mini Heath bar. Not a whole lot to get excited about, but it made me laugh on the inside—this “reject pile” not only looks the same every year for both of my children, it contains the same stuff I rejected when I was a kid. The same st

Time to Celebrate
Isn't "Fall Back Day" the greatest? You know, the day we "fall back" to Standard Time. The day that Daylight Saving Time ends. I like it so much, it just might be my favorite holiday. Oh, I know, it's not really an "official" holiday. But it should be. In fact, they ought to just call it Mother's Day and forget about that inferior shorter day in May. After all, if you're a mother with kids still at home, isn't time the one thing you wish you had more of? Time for yourself or your family or your laundry. Time to make it to places on time. Time to do things you never do, like catch up in the family scrapbook/photo album, have lunch with a friend, fix your broken earrings, read a book,

Witches, Sharks, and The Generation Gap of Fear
Just in time for Halloween: A study by Finnish researchers says kids get more scared when watching scary movies with their parents than when they're by themselves. According to a new study published in the journal Child: Care, Health and Development, children were four times more afraid of the events on the screen when their parents were watching, too. The researchers suggest that in spite of the soothing that parents may offer, a kid picks up on more hair-raising moments with parents, thanks to a parent's facial expressions or physical reactions, and in turn the child gets more scared. I had to laugh. Because any time I've ever watched movies with my kids, they're not scared in the leas

Search for a Cure
I get sidetracked a lot when I'm cleaning the house, but sometimes that's a good thing. Like the other day, when something caught my eye as I was throwing away the "dog newspapers"-- the ones we put on the kitchen floor for Luke when we're going to be gone awhile. Luckily, this particular issue of the Dallas Morning News was "unused" and I sat transfixed, reading a story about a suburban Dallas family with 3 children, beaming at me from the crumpled paper in matching black sweaters. Just a few years ago, Michelle, the mom, had been a typical "normal" mom, encouraging the kids to do their homework, volunteering in the classroom, cooking with her daughter, cheering her son at his hockey