Happy Friday Ya’ll!  Things have been busy around here ( as usual ) and I have a ton of posts that I am dying to get out, but first I thought I’d pop on and do a quick update about our fertility journey since it’s been awhile since I shared. Things have been pretty quiet on that front for the past couple months.  Just a lot of waiting.  That’s always the hardest part, right?  On one hand, it’s been nice to have time to thoroughly process my emotions.  On the other hand, having such a long time to cool off gave room for those feelings of uncertainty to creep back in.  These months of recovery have been hard on my body – more so than previous miscarriages and the thought of enduring that again (and again and again, if need be) scared me.  For awhile Lee and I began looking into adoption more seriously.  It didn’t take long though for us to come to agreement that it’s not the right option for us at this …

Hi everyone! How are we in March already? The past few weeks have been a blur with all of the travel we somehow packed in!  I was going to try to recap all of our fun in one giant post, but I don’t want to put anyone to sleep so I’ll start with NYC and save our Disney adventures for later. My trip to New York was an early birthday present from my amazing hubby.  I’d been wanting to see Waitress since before I knew it was a real musical (true story) but was patiently waiting for it to come to Seattle.  Lee, being over-the-top kind guy that he is, decided to surprise me with a weekend in New York to see the show on Broadway with my sisters!  It was truly the trip of a lifetime.  Not only did it fulfill my dream of getting to see a play on Broadway, but to see this musical staring Sara Bareilles with my sisters was almost too good to be true! Being all of our first times in New …

First off, I just want to say a huge thank you for all the love and support I received after my last post! Your comments and messages meant the world to me and it was such a relief to have that post land so gently into your kind hands.  To those who came forward and shared your own experiences, my heart goes out to you!  Working to cultivate that sense of community around the topic of miscarriage is exactly the reason I stepped forward to tell my own story.  I appreciate your encouragement and bravery more than you know! Today I want to shift gears and talk about something a little different – Yoga.  It’s been a hobby of mine for quite some time, but only this past year has it really become a passion.  I always viewed it as a fun form of exercise, but was never able to commit to it as a part of my daily routine.  When we moved to Seattle last spring, away from the solid support structure that I’d …

Happy Anniversary!  It just occurred to me that it was right about this time last year, January 10th to be precise, that I sat down and began this little blog.  It was a jumping off point.  A commitment to myself that after a very trying year (or two),  I was ready to leave it all behind and start figuring out who I was again.  I am pleased to report that 2017 was a MUCH better year!  It was a year full of uncertainty and change – making big leaps of faith and discovering that even though things didn’t work out quite the way we thought or hoped, we ended up exactly where we needed to be at exactly the right time. This blog is a token of that decision to leap, but as much as I hoped it would be a place for me to check in and report back along my journey, there was a big piece of the puzzle that I was still working through.  Every time I sat down to write a …

Whew, what a week! With my kiddos both in school for the first time, I’ve been bracing myself for what I knew would be a long season of strengthening our immune systems. This week it hit, right on cue. First my oldest, then myself, followed by Ms. kindergarten – never with enough time for any one person to recover before the next one succumbed to the nastiness, of course. With at least one of my kids attending school every day this week, I still had to drag my aching body out of bed in the mornings and give myself a pep talk just to get through drop off. Getting out the door seemed like a feat, in and of itself, but the thought of facing other people in this state was nearly enough to send me crawling back to bed. I wanted so badly to slink out the door late and dodge the steady stream of walkers that buzz down our street every morning. I even contemplated dropping the kids off in the car just …

Let me start out by saying that this is not a post intended to bash homeschooling. I believe homeschooling is a great option for many families and can be done beautifully and successfully. The truth of the matter is, however, homeschooling is not for everyone and that is ok. I want to share our real life struggles with homeschooling and our decision to transition to public school because I feel like there is a void of information regarding the subject and I believe it can be helpful to know that you are not alone if you’ve tried homeschooling and it’s not what you expected or if you are considering homeschooling and wondering if it is right for you. When I began contemplating the idea of homeschooling my daughters over 2 years ago, I scoured the internet searching for answers as to whether or not it would be a good fit for our family and what our long term education path might look like. Nobody ever said that it would be easy (thank goodness), but everywhere …

Things are crazy right now under our little roof!  I’ll explain more later, but let’s just say that when I started the year off on a resolution spree- wanting to take advantage of a fresh start, make changes and try new things- I had no idea that life was about to throw me a  curve ball, forcing me to take my idea of a ‘fresh start’ to a whole new level! Despite life being hectic, things have actually been going fairly well on the resolution front! Our progress with reducing waste has been kind of a two steps forward, one step back sort of thing. Slow and steady, but I’ll take it! Shortly after beginning our mission to reduce waste, we also took on the Whole30 challenge as a family. In a lot of ways I feel like these two goals complement each other nicely – If I am going to reduce waste by making things from scratch, I might as well make Whole30 approved versions – but at the same time, the complete overhaul of our diet …

It’s been nearly a month since my little girl turned 7 so I figured it might be time to finally write a post about all of her birthday fun. This years festivities were a little more low key than usual, but tons of fun none the less! Emily played a big role in planning her own birthday party this year. She insisted upon a Gracie (her cat) themed party and had so much fun designing a cake, coming up with party games, and helping make the decorations. Although I am not always the best at letting go of control, it was truly a joy to watch her take charge and plan a party that was very much her own! What’s a party without delicious snacks? This girl had a lot of fun browsing Pintrest for cat themed birthday goodies, but her absolute must-have treat was this fluffy gray kitty cake that she had been imagining and sketching out for months! Although we had to tone it down from her original 2 tier design to fit our smaller …

It’s inauguration day and the heated emotions that had only just begun to cool off are once again fired up as most Americans are either enthusiastically hopeful or anxiously biting their nails. This is not the easiest post to write. I’m not a particularly political person, nor am I accustom to sharing this type of personal information, but in the spirit of being ‘real’ I thought I’d share a major mommy fail of mine recently to help remind us all, including (and perhaps, especially) myself, to be kind and mindful of the words we say. My story goes back a couple of months to the week of the election when my first grade daughter came home and announced at our weekly dinner with my in-laws that her classmate’s mom said Hillary Clinton is a “baby killer”!  I was a very much caught off guard in the moment and didn’t know quite how to respond. I could have just brushed it off as “crazy things kids say”,  but after a lot of thought I decided that letting those words …