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Encouragement

Encouragement

3 Ways to Boost Your Bandwidth

When my husband Mark is frustrated, it’s written all over his face. And if I can’t see it in his face, I can hear it in his tone. That’s the way if went down last night. He was frustrated with the internet speed on his laptop and…it wasn’t the first time. “Susan…” he began, “You’re eating up all the bandwidth on our Wi-Fi!” I looked over at my laptop and realized he was right. I had two different search engines up: Google Chrome and Safari. Plus, between Pinterest, Facebook, emails, and a various array of other tabs, I had more internet windows up than I could count! Oops. Right away, I got frustrated. Why do I always forget to close windows? Why do I never have enough bandwidth on my internet? How much does it cost to boost your bandwidth? Why does it always cost more? Then, I stopped. It wasn’t just my laptop that needed more bandwidth–IT WAS MY LIFE! I realized that I could ask those same questions about my life in general. I don’t ever seem to have enough bandwidth in my brain. Lately, I am constantly running out of time and energy. So if you’re ready …

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Encouragement

How to Stop Missing Miracles

When my kids were young, we lived in a small house Mark had bought when he was single. Each day when I’d take the kids in the yard to play and ride bikes, I’d worry because there was no sidewalk separating them from a busy road. This may seem like a silly thing, but I began praying for God to give us a house with a sidewalk. Soon enough, I saw our dream house. In a nearby neighborhood, I just happened to drive by a beautiful older house on a corner surrounded on two sides with…the perfect sidewalk. That day my prayer changed from desiring a house with a sidewalk to asking God for THE house with THE sidewalk. It wasn’t long before I felt God urging me to stop and introduce myself to whomever was living in the house of my dreams. And knowing God’s sense of humor, I shouldn’t have been surprised when this tug came on the day I was wearing a crazy safari outfit from being a part of our church’s Vacation Bible School. I uncomfortably rang the doorbell in my bandana, khakis, and big ol’ boots to find a lovely older couple on the other …

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Encouragement

Join Me in Supporting Moms’ Night Out

From the crazy mom characters to the silly scenarios they found themselves in, I found myself as a mom really relating to so many moments in Moms’ Night Out. So when critics recently came out against the movie, I was completely caught off guard. I couldn’t think of one way in which the movie “never takes the difficulties of motherhood seriously.” I decided to look further into it and checked out the Rotten Tomatoes website. According to them, only 15% of critics enjoyed it while an overwhelming 86% of the general audience loved it. The main concern of the critics seemed to be that the movie was suggesting that “a woman’s place is in the home, not out on the town.” As soon as I read that, I thought to myself that the last thing we needed was to pit working moms against non-working moms. A mom is a mom—whether she is a stay at home mom or works in an office. Through different seasons of life, I have found myself in both places; sometimes my office has been the traditional cubicle with a desk and a stack of papers, like now. Other times, my office has been the floor …

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Encouragement

Look Up From Your Phone

Are you suffering from digital distraction? “You need a new pacemaker and another ablation.” I have heard this before. Last month, I had my 5th pacemaker replacement and next month I will have my 3rd ablation. My heart keeps me very grounded in the reality that life is tenuous. Every minute, hour and day count. Before every surgery I am forced to ask myself, “Is this it? Have I done everything there is for me to do?” And when I wake up, post surgery, my first thought without fail is, “I guess not. I wonder what I have left to do?” There is always a reason for life because God always has a plan. And that plan always includes people. I am thankful for the constant reminder that I am here for a reason. I think many people have forgotten why they are here. They think they are here for their phone instead of their husband, child, or neighbor. Phones are a constant digital distraction. We all need to be reminded, some of us more than others. My surgeries are my reminder (I needed obviously needed a big one). Maybe the quote above and the video it was taken from below, …

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Encouragement

My Moms’ Night Out on the Red Carpet

Wow and wow! I love this movie. It is funny, it is encouraging, and it is awesome family entertainment. But what I love most is that this movie celebrates MOMS and the producers, directors, and Provident Films made that very clear at the premiere. Everywhere you looked on the red carpet, you saw moms—every day, plain old, normal moms! Ok, so we didn’t look quite as plain as usual and definitely not our normal selves. We glammed it up as best as we could. Notice how smooth I got my hair. It was a combination of effort and the LA air. Lesson 1: You can have Hollywood hair in dry air!

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Encouragement

3 Things You Never Knew About Easter

Time for Easter. And you know what that means? CHOCOLATE! Well, maybe not quite. My friends know that I am obsessed with chocolate and my kids are convinced that all I eat are chocolate covered almonds. However, as much as I love chocolate and all the chocolate Easter has to offer, it is not what Easter is all about for me or the kids! Easter is about Christ. No two ways about it.

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Encouragement

Derailed: Getting Off Track Again?

Have you ever been derailed in life, by life? Getting off track seems to happen to me often, so you’d think I would be used to it. But how do you get used to something that is constantly changing like life? The 4 things that tend to hi-jack my train are:

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Encouragement

My Bathroom Organization Trick

Lately I have been doing a little spring home organization blogging here. Lest, you think I am an organized person as one mom who reads my posts and commented to me–I want to make a huge disclaimer: I am NOT organized! Sometimes out of sheer desperation I stumble upon an organization/housekeeping tip. This bathroom organization trick came to me when we moved back into the house after the flood. I was unpacking dishes and lamenting the fact that my overabundance of coffee cups were hogging valuable cupboard real estate. I finished the kitchen and moved on to my bathroom. Ugh, too much make up. By this time, I was wearying of sorting and purging and my brain just could not whittle the pile down. To make it worse, the plastic trays I had used for my make up before looked frightfully yucky in my new clean drawers. No, no, no I thought. I am not going to run out and spend $50 on trays that no one sees but me and don’t work well anyways in my deeper second drawer because the make up piles up and I can’t see below it all. Inexpensive bathroom organization! Then it hit …

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Encouragement

Come Play in L.A.!

Come play in L.A. with me and my husband, Mark! For real! We are giving away an entire trip including round tip airfare for 2, 2 nights in a hotel, 2 tickets to the movie premier of Moms’ Night Out, 2 tickets to the premier post party and $200 spending money for meals. Can I hear a WOOHOO?! But really, it’s a whole weekend away — good for two people. I love Jon Erwin, the producer, and his wife Beth and I hope to introduce you to them. You can enter to win by clicking on the image below and sharing a picture of why you need a Moms’ Night Out on our Facebook page. So easy! Go, enter, win and we will have an amazing 2 night’s out as we play in L.A.!

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Encouragement

Laundry Tips from a Mom

I don’t give a lot of practical household advice because I am not the queen of clean! But we were sharing a few tips during an iMOM content brainstorm and I realized I have a couple good ones that came to me out of desperation. With 5 kids I had to develop a laundry strategy out of self defense! This first trick developed because my kids wore white uniform shirts to school that were daily be-speckled with food. I simply cannot stand dirty white shirts, spotted with who knows what. They made my kids look dirty before they even walked out the door in the morning! Throwing a cup of bleach into the white load did not work for me. The leftover bleach would somehow drip onto the next load in the washer which was never white and spot the colored clothes. And the cup of bleach once diluted in water was not strong enough for each and every spot. Lastly, the kids uniforms had a colored emblem on them that over time would turn pink from that one cup of bleach. My Stain Solution for Whites My laundry solution is to keep a fine tipped squeeze bottle filled with bleach on …

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