Our family has seen Frozen several times but Mark and I have not seen it together. I saw it first with the girls, and then Mark took the kids one day while I was working. When he came back, he said, “I can’t believe they had a gay couple in the movie!” And I was like . . . huh? What are you talking about? I don’t remember tat and I would remember that. Mark was sure that when the shopkeeper of Wandering Oaken's Trading Post and Sauna points to the sauna and says, “Hey family!”, that he was . . .

Today’s guest post is an address Byron Hurt shared with college students at Amherst College. He later shared it on facebook and I thought it was so poignant and powerful. He generously allowed me to reshare it here. This morning, I was standing in the bathroom waiting for my four year-old daughter to finish using it so that I could shave and get dressed.  When she was done, she walked over to the sink to put soap onto her tiny hands, and stood in front of me and the bathroom sink.  . . .

Valentine’s Day: I love it and I hate it. For one thing, it’s starting to become just another one of those holidays designed to make busy moms feel bad because they didn’t have time to take cute photos or arrange a Pinterest-worthy candy bag. And for another thing, it’s kind of weird how we have this one day per year when couples are supposed to be romantic and buy each other gifts and stare longingly into each other’s eyes …even if they don’t give a single thought to any of those things on . . .

Last week I shared how I made the kids some economical photobooth valentines using an app on my phone, and then printing the photos (tutorial here). The photos arrived and the next step was to cut them into photo strips. Easy peasy, and because I have adjusted the collage to the right size, the photo strips were perfectly spaced on a 4x6 photo. After that, I had the kids tape each photo strip to a piece of Airheads candy. (Because Valentine's Day has become the new Halloween and . . .

A couple weeks ago I spoke at ALT Summit. This year, the conference was having a party where everyone was requested to wear green. The night before my flight, the dress I had so cleverly ordered online had not yet arrived to my door. It was a Tuesday, which means my husband was working late. So I had to schlep all four kids to the mall as I searched for a new green frock. One of the stores we walked through was Gap, and there was a large photo of Cyndi Lauper and Billy Porter on the wall: The . . .