The Mama

I'm a 42 year old wife to the love of my life, my best friend, George. We've been together for 9 years and married 5 and half. Our love story is very full of peaks and valleys and it's made us strong together. We are miscarriage survivors and we have a spunky 5 year old girl, Lily and our grand finale, baby girl Violet.

I'm also a mama to a 16 year old boy from my first marriage, Andrew {mine} and a nearly fulltime stepmama to a 12 year old girl, Reagan {his}. That means I've had babies in THREE different decades!
I'm honest, loyal, patient, loving, emotional, authentic and playfully sarcastic.

I'm a former kindergarten teacher, an event planner & even pursued a singing career in Nashville.

Now I'm lucky enough to stay home with my girls right now, although I do look forward to getting back into the classroom!

I take wayyyy too many photographs, have an unnatural affinity for Sharpies, I'm a lifelong learner, I'm fiercely passionate about parenting, education and family, and have a strong faith.

This blog is the baby that came after I outgrew previous blog homes documenting pregnancy and everyday life in separate places. I write primarily about my everyday life with most of it about Lily and Violet. Andrew is of the age where his life is more private, so I tend to write more about his events when writing about him.

As I said, I'm honest. I'm authentic. And my life is not always full of the good stuff. In addition to writing about the good stuff, I write about the struggles in being a stepmom, sharing custody with an out-of-state parent {my son's dad}, the difficulties of parenting a tween, toddler, baby, and stepchild. I've very protective of my marriage and while I may gush about him sometimes, I write about him mostly in his role as a daddy.

I embrace people and their stories and have made many good "real person" friendships through social media. Heck, I met my husband online {not on a dating site}so I'm a believer. :)

Like I told my husband years ago, as a teacher, my job was to champion people~~seek out their best, their potential. Be optimistic and hopeful. As I've gotten older, I've learned those traits weren't about my job as a teacher. It's who I am.