• What-does-ten-years-old-look-like
    active family travel - adoption and tweens - family - Parenting - parenting

    What Does Ten-Years-Old Look Like?

    April 12, 2015 - By 

    This past month my youngest girl turned 11 and we celebrated with a Minecraft cake and a sleepover and a family dinner at Lone Star Texas Grill. We all learned to ski together as a family in Tremblant the weekend before her birthday party. In many ways, that was the perfect start to sporty spice’s birthday week. This is the daughter I still joke never met a sport she didn’t like. The one who wandered off at Disney when she was four and nearly gave me a heart attack on the spot. The one who sported my eye shadow the…

  • Family-Trip-to-Tremblant
    active family travel - family - Health - parenting - Quebec - Travel

    Hugs from Dad #WordlessWednesday #Travel #Tremblant

    April 1, 2015 - By 

    I rarely share shots of my spouse here. Why? Because he hates having his picture taken. Sad but true. Husband of blogger hates having picture taken. Honestly. So capturing a nice shot of him on film is a big deal for me. I often point my iPhone at him when we travel and he turns or moves ruining the shot. Early in March we were all invited to Mont Tremblant to visit as a family unit. While we were there, the entire family learned how to ski in two days!! I am super proud of that, in case you couldn’t…

  • tween_girl_birthday_word_search
    adoption and tweens

    Ainsley’s Tween Girl Birthday Word Search

    March 10, 2015 - By 

    It’s my daughter’s eleventh birthday. My youngest daughter. My mini ninja. The girl we used to dub a two foot tornado. Now a four foot tornado. No idea how she can possibly be eleven! Then again, I can’t believe I have a teenager either. Ainsley keeps us on our toes, but in a good way mostly. From the moment she arrived in our home she was almost always on the go. I remember her first ever attempt at rolling as a baby. She rolled clear across the living room floor to grab her sister’s Barbie. That’s just her way. At…

  • childhood_anxiety
    adoption and tweens - Health - Parenting

    Perplexing Childhood Anxiety Symptoms – Part 2 of a Series

    March 2, 2015 - By 

    For years we struggled trying to figure out why my daughter worried so much. And why she had so many stomach aches and headaches too. Then, when it became such a big factor that it interfered with her getting to school, we had to take action. Childhood anxiety is a challenge but it can be manageable with support and sometimes medications too. Here’s part 2 in my childhood anxiety series – on Childhood Anxiety Symptoms.   A Bit About Our Daughter We have a daughter with Generalized anxiety disorder. I started talking about her anxiety disorder several years ago when…

  • parenting teens
    adoption and tweens - family - Parenting - parenting

    The Art of Hope and Parenting Teens

    February 17, 2015 - By 

    At some point this past year I realized my children aren’t really children anymore, not in the strictest sense of the word. One is a teenager and the other a tween and that means that in the context of child development they are in fact closer to being adults than they are to being toddlers or preschoolers or children. My heart simultaneously leaps, shouts, cries, expands and contracts as I write that. As they bloom so do I, and yet it also tugs heavily when I think that they will soon be adults. Oh my god how I hope we…

  • childhood_anxiety
    adoption and tweens - Health

    Five Things I Know About Childhood Anxiety – Part 1 of a New Series

    January 26, 2015 - By 

    In 2014 we spent a huge amount of time investing in educating our family about childhood anxiety. We took part in a weekly youth group therapy session to help parents and children understand and manage anxiety. It was gruelling and exhausting and, I hope, worth it. Every single Tuesday for several months my daughter and I drove to the children’s hospital in town and we learned how to successfully manage her childhood anxiety. We split into two groups every session. There was a parents group and a youth group. Eventually we all came together to discuss things together but the…

  • Technology

    Ring Ring Pick Up the Phone – Cell Phones and Teens – The Sequel

    January 23, 2015 - By 

    Remember this post? Remember when I posted this week about the $400 strange data charge on our Rogers bill? Remember how thrilled I was when I realized it was my darling daughter’s phone which doesn’t even have data that rang up a huge data bill? Yes, I was livid and I confiscated the phone and the iPad. And I was peeved at Rogers, because I told them when I hooked said phone up that it was for calling. We had talk and text only. And yet a $400 data bill arrived. How does that happen? I queried how this happened…

  • adoption and tweens - Parenting

    Ring Ring Pick up the Phone… ERRRR Don’t: Hard Life Lessons for Digital Kids

    January 19, 2015 - By 

    Kids are the best. Except when they are giving me grey hairs. Which was the weekend. Oh I still love them madly and to the moon and back. But opening a Rogers bill to find out someone had added data packs on their own to their relatively newly connected phone supposed to be used for emergencies only, and then having my eyeballs pop out of my head, was not on the schedule for today. And yet there it was $400 worth of added data. So what happened? Well, I picked my eyeballs up off my laptop and then I spent…

  • family - Giveaways

    K-Tel’s Mini Pops CDs 11 and 12 for Kids #Giveaway

    January 7, 2015 - By 

    My kids are 10 and 13 now and they are all about the music and the computers and gadgets too of course. My youngest loves listening to her Ipod Nano and she also has a pretty busy social calendar which means a lot of car time. In my mini van I have a TV but I don’t always want my kids watching TV on the road so I love to have music handy and books too. My husband has no entertainment system in his car and he often pops in a family friendly CD for road trips and even for…