This post is sponsored by Blue Apron For the past two weeks, we have been trying Blue Apron’s new family dinner plan. I have written about Blue Apron before. It's a service that sends recipes along with exact measurements of the ingredients that you will need. It takes all of the guesswork and shopping out of creating meals from scratch. The family meals are $8.74 per person, delivered in a refrigerated box so that you don’t have to be sitting at-the-wait when the box arrives. Because I like . . .

A couple weeks ago, I took a weeklong trip to Israel with a group of about 20 other women. The purpose of the trip was to learn more about Israeli Palestinian conflict, as well as to visit some historical sites. A couple people have commented on the fact that I haven't written about that trip yet on my blog. It's a bit unusual for me. Typically when I visit another country with the purpose of storytelling about humanitarian efforts, I am writing from the road. I had every intention of doing that . . .

There are a few things in life that make me inexplicably happy no matter what mood I’m in…things that restore my faith in humanity and lift my spirits regardless of what’s going on. Flashmobs are one of those things. I just grin even at the idea of random people coming together under the purpose of bringing cheer through a surprise dance. But there is another convergence of random people bringing joy that I want to talk about today: the phenomenon of satirical Amazon reviews.The comment section . . .

This post is sponsored by Zondervan. Making friends with other moms is something I have found to be incredibly difficult. I really value friendships. But most of my friends are women who I have been in relationship with for over a decade, well before I had my own kids. And while I love my friends to death, most of us are in very different life stages. Mark and I had our children much later than our circle of friends. So when most of my friends were in the stage of doing playgroups and park . . .