Phew… It’s time to let out a big sigh of relief. The holidays are over! Don’t get me wrong, we LOVE Christmas, and we celebrate the birth of Jesus. But as a blended family, this time of year is just extra crazy! Now that we are a little bit past the crazy, I have had …
the blended mama
Taking Back My Identity
For several years, my identity was single mom, working mom, strong mom, fit mom. These were things that I felt defined me; they were who I was. I worked full time, exercised regularly with a personal trainer at the gym, worked my Beachbody coaching business, parented two children (with the help of my village) and …
8 Lessons of the Blended Staycation
Summers for blended families can be as stressful as they are rewarding. We recently had a week of “staycation” with our six children. I just wanted to share some of the lessons we learned (or were reminded of) during this week. 1. Your kids just want to spend time with you. More than anything else, …
Challenging Co-Parenting
To say that co-parenting with a former spouse is easy would be a lie. Regardless of whether you are on good terms with your ex or not, you are going to face challenges at some point. How you collectively handle those challenges can have huge impacts on your children. I’m going to share some of …
The Joys of School Events
As the parents of school-aged children, you are constantly pulled in multiple directions – recitals, programs, sports games, fundraising events, carnivals, etc. There is almost aways some “event” that your children want to attend. As a blended family, one of the extra challenges we face is that two of our children (“mine”) live with us …
Year One
This is the third in a series, so if you missed them you can read the first one here and the second one here. We ended the last post with saying our “I do’s” and wedding cake (of course). I think I forgot to mention the importance of my wedding dress. I was honored to be able to …
You Are Not Alone
If you’ve been following this blog, you know I’m in the middle of a series that’s telling an overview of DJs’ and my relationship. I’m going to take a break from that today because what I’m going to write about is heavy on my heart. Dealing with damaged emotions. We had our blending families small …
In the Beginning
This is the beginning of a blog series that walks through how all of this started. So let’s start with In the Beginning… DJ and I met on eharmony. Yep – we met online. Both of us were about to end our subscriptions, but from the beginning, something just felt different about our match. I think DJ …
Are We Living In Sin?
I’ve read some comments to a posting on another blended family FB page recently that really disturbed me. I know, I really shouldn’t read the comments, but I did. The original post was promoting the Blending Families material (and of course I can’t find it now to link it here) that we are using in …
How Our Garden Grows
We had some beautiful weather here this past weekend, so we spent a good amount of time outside. DJ worked hard to finish up the chicken coop extension, and T helped me work in the garden, pulling weeds and tilling up the raised beds. We will spend the next few weeks planning out our garden, …