Oil Life, Happy Wife

There's my happy baby! That's back before all this started. It was before all the screaming and the screeching and the noise. It was before all the unbearable meltdowns and the arguing over every little thing. There are times when we don't know how we'll possibly make it through another day. The look on his face in this picture is why we push through even when we feel like we can't. That pure joy is in there even when we can't see it. And we are going to fight every day to get it back.

Father's Day means different things to different people. For some it elicits feelings of joy and elation, and for others it brings sadness. My heart has all of those feelings and more on Father's Day. First and foremost it's a time to celebrate my husband for all of the things that make him an amazing father. There are really way too many reasons to list, but I'll cover a few. He is loving and compassionate. He's fun and driven. He picks them up when they are low. He teaches them life skills and makes them laugh. They know that no matter what life throws at them he will be their rock and their guide. My husband is the type of father I wish I had grown up with. The kids are his world, and I am so proud of the way he is killing it. I could be given five lifetimes to search and never find a man who could do the job of fatherhood better. Of all of his attributes, this is the one I admire most. Father's Day also reminds me of a relationship I once had that ...

I remember when I was little and my mom would tell me stories about where she was and what she was doing during different events in history. I remember her saying she was at school the day the JFK was shot. She described what she was wearing and whose class she was in. My mom said she could close her eyes and go back in time like it had happened yesterday. I naively thought that would never be me. I would never tell those stories to my kids. I was wrong. On September 11, 2001 I woke up to the TV already on. I had gotten home from work in the early hours of the morning and I must have fallen asleep with the TV on. A news broadcast was on with a live feed of the World Trade Center. It appeared that a plane had crashed into the side of one of the buildings. I called my mom to see if she watching and ask what was going on. We sat there for a minute listening to the anchors try to figure out what was happening when the second plane hit. At that point it was obvious that the buildings h...

NOT JUST OILS! Did you know that Young Living has much more to offer than essential oils? For many of us, essential oils are what brought us to Young Living. Oils though, make up only a portion of the products they offer. I started this journey with a need to increase my toddler's health. Now I am on a mission to drastically reduce the amount of chemicals that go into our bodies and promote wellness wherever possible. I am obsessed with the oils because they work. I can see and feel a difference when I use them. I never dreamed that we would be able to fit the oils into our tight budget, but we have figured it out because we saw the benefits and knew we didn't want to be without them. Being with Young Living isn't about single products, it's a whole lifestyle change. YL has a whole line of household products that are actually healthful. They have dishwashing liquid, dishwasher soap, laundry detergent, household cleaner, etc. You can actually benefit your heal...

I am a stay-at-home mom. I have been for nine years. Motherhood can be both exhilarating and exhausting. I follow a ton of mom pages on Facebook because if you don't embrace the funny, you’ll go crazy. I am incredibly grateful for them. The content is so relatable. Sometimes it's almost as if they have cameras set up inside my house. It's comforting and reassuring to know that other moms are experiencing the same ridiculous daily woes in their journeys through motherhood as I am. Many days are filled with diapers, endless toy pick-up, funky smells of unknown origin, and arguments about tiny bites of food. Some days the toddler skips his nap and falls asleep before bath time. Sometimes he has chips for dinner because that's what he will eat, and I am too tired to fight. He has code red meltdowns in the checkout line because I didn't let him put his drink on the belt exactly the way he wanted to. I get it. Motherhood can be trying and overwhelming and daunt...

Good communication between a parent and child is one of the most important gifts in life. When done correctly, the seeds you plant when your children are small will continue to bloom throughout their lives. Here are 10 tips to improve your parent/child communication: 1. Listen to your kids.  I mean really listen to them. Oftentimes, kids don’t articulate their needs well. You need to analyze their overall behavior to get an idea of what is going on with them. Sometimes the most important details are in the words that weren’t spoken. Pay attention to topics that come up frequently. That may indicate an area that a child needs help with but doesn’t want to ask for. 2. Ask them questions.  Be interested in your children’s lives. When they tell you stories, ask for more information. You can inquire about their daily activities and friends without seeming nosy and overbearing. You don’t need to be best friends with your children, but you do need to purposefully stay involv...

By now everyone has seen the story of the mother orca that carried her dead calf for 18 days while she grieved. When the mother became too tired, or she needed to eat, the other orcas carried him for her. Almost every blogger on the planet has written a post about the power of that orca's grief. I've seen two in my news feed already today. While I have experienced the loss of multiple unborn babies, I have never had to go through holding a child who has died after his smile has been permanently etched in my mind. I don't know how anyone survives that. Maybe they never really do. This post is not about grief though. It's about something else I saw in this story. I have always had a hatred for the phrase, "it takes a village." It doesn't really take a village to raise a child. It takes a parent or parents who watch their kids carefully, always put them first, and who sacrifice daily to give them everything they deserve. My husband and I have never relied...