My family is a huge fan of tradition. We enjoy vacationing at the same resort every year, swimming in the same lake one week in August every summer, ending our days with the same prayer, and taking the same pictures at the start of every school year. The Christmas holiday season holds by far the…

Christmas is a time of year that is synonymous with celebrations and food and loved ones, but for many people around the world, everyday struggles such as those for food and clean water still remain no matter what the season. This Christmas, Samaritan’s Purse is asking for your help to improve the lives of these…

We’ve had a challenging couple few several weeks. Stop. Reverse. Let’s try that again. Life has been filled with insane challenges since the middle of September. In fact, there have been so many nearly daily challenges so far outside the realm of my normal life that were I to list them here, I would come…

I know the world can be a really ugly place.  I get that people all have “stuff,” and sometimes that makes them behave like evil disgusting insane unhappy people. I get it. But I don’t always see it.  Except that lately I’ve seen a lot of it, mostly because it’s been thrown in my face….

Growing up in a small town, you tend to know everything that’s happening around you. I sometimes joke that if I sneezed while grabbing the newspaper off the front lawn, the phone would be ringing with someone saying “God bless you” by the time I got back into the house. Honestly, that’s only a slight…

The #HERSHEYSKitchens Twitter Events scheduled for this holiday season have been cancelled.  Be sure to stop by HersheysKitchens.com for delicious recipes and helpful baking tips for this holiday season.  Thank you!

Later this month my family is making the trek to the Happiest Place on Earth, and we’ve got our Glow with the Show Mickey Ear hats packed and ready to join us at Disney’s Hollywood Studio’s nighttime spectacular, Fantasmic! Last month the Glow with the Show ears debuted as part of Fantasmic!’s 15th Anniversary celebration….

I attended what I would describe as a fairly intense, serious university.  In every class I was surrounded by future lawyers and politicians.  A justice class could turn into a fight to the death and a fellow student once called me a fascist during a philosophy class.  So imagine my utter joy when I was…

Remember when you were a kid and there was that one house in the neighborhood that everyone wanted to visit on Halloween? You’d try to get there first and would re-arrange your entire route to make sure you rang that doorbell before they ran out of treats. Remember what that house gave out to the…

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. – Henry David Thoreau This week has been a rough one….

1. I am still alive. 2. I do still want to blog. 3. (and I don’t mean Twitter Party RSVP posts) September started out so nicely.  I was sticking to my 2013-2014 school year plan to end my workday every day by 4:00, focusing my time on my family except for the evenings when I…

The following is a very important guest post from my friend, Janine: Hurry up and wait. That is what it feels like when someone ‘sees something’ on a mammogram picture. Hurry to book another appointment. Then wait for the results. It can be agonizing – especially when it leads to more tests, more waiting, more…

With the changes to Disney’s Guest Assistance Card program rapidly approaching, I understand that some readers continue to have questions and concerns as we all do when asked to adapt to change.  To further clarify Disney’s commitment to all Guests and hopefully ease your minds, I am sharing a letter from Meg Crofton, President, Walt…

As you may have noticed from my frequent trips to Walt Disney World, the “Resourceful Disney” category on this blog, or my incessant Disney-related tweets, I kind of like Disney.  I like Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, I fell in love with Disneyland Park in California last summer, I believe that the Disney Cruise Line…

Tomorrow is the big day.  HUGE. For months you’ve heard me talk about the dangers of texting and driving (it’s deadly), the ways you can stop (there’s an app for that!), and how to talk to your kids about pledging not to text and drive (and you should pledge, too). Now September 19th is just one sleep…

So hey, there are some images in this post. If you’re reading this in email, you’re going to want to download them or else this rambling post will make even less sense. I can’t find my blogging mojo.  I’ve lost that blogging feeling.  Blogging don’t live here anymore. Okay, maybe it’s not quite that bad….

With back to school now in full swing post Labor Day, it’s a great time to think about your child’s hearing health.  As parents, we often take for granted that our children can hear and see well, but the truth is that there are many experiences that can damage our children’s hearing, including repeated ear…

This post was sponsored as part of a compensated online campaign.  All opinions are my own. We just wrapped an amazing summer filled with hours upon hours of family time, including multiple road trips.  Every single time we traveled farther than just around town, we encountered at least one vehicle drifting in and out of…

Disclosure: This post is part of a compensated campaign. All opinions and Disney enthusiasm are my own. First of all, let me assure you that you read the title of the post correctly. Someone is going to Disney Parks, and Craisins® Dried Cranberries is footing the bill. While it may appear that my family only vacations…

We’ve got not one – but TWO – fun Disney Twitter parties next week with amazing prizes, and they’re going to be so great that I’m sending out the Save the Date to all of you now, even before we have the hashtags! Mark your calendar now for Tuesday, August 27th at 8 p.m. ET for…

I will never forget the first moment that I boldly communicated that my calling in life was to be a mother.  During a bit of downtime in a college creating writing class, the professor asked us – a motley crew of students from various programs and majors – to share what we hoped to be…