Holiday traditions change because we change. Some of those changes are within our control and others are changes we have to learn to accept as changes that have nothing to do with us. While some of those changes can hurt us, when we find a way through those changes, we can continue to make the holidays are own, celebrations that capture where we are in a given moment, even if those moments are painful.
We Need Our Villages
And so we’re working on rebuilding our village, a village with a few satelite campuses scattered throughout the country, but more importantly a local village that will continue to walk with us through all that life continues to hand us.
Unexpected Changes, Unexpected Timeline
Suddenly we find ourselves with days to get our house ready to put on the market before we leave for vacation. We will have less than a week to finish the packing and move once we return from vacation. While our previous moves have involved months of planning and then a rush at the very end to get everything taken care of, this is all just happening in a rush. A rush that feels right, but a rush nonetheless.
A Year of Solar – The First Quarter
We were in uncharted territory and we were going to have to track the usage and benefits ourselves. Even though the panels were active in the middle of November, we decided that to truly track the benefits of our decision, we were going to have to start our comparison at the beginning of December, which is where our quarterly reports will begin.
One Parent’s Approach To Dealing With Media “Appropriateness”
Parenting is an imperfect science in which we are constantly trying to replicate our own parents’ successes and fix their mistakes, only to make our own. And while each family has to make decisions about how they gauge what their children are exposed to, we should do so with the knowledge that we won’t be able to protect them forever and teachable moments can be had even as we snuggle in front of the television with our kiddos.
Are We Helping Our Kids Thrive?
Thriving is not achieved through the relentless pursuit of success. It is achieved through time and the freedom to explore. It is achieved through emotional and financial security. It is achieved through support and nurture. We know this and yet it is still one of the most difficult parenting pursuits for Americans. Some of us face very real roadblocks which need to be removed by changed policy. Some of us are so focused on our missed opportunities that we struggle to see how our desire to make sure our kids also don’t miss out might be impacting our kids. Some of us just don’t understand the systemic pressures that are weighing down our adolescents because that pressure just wasn’t there when we were kids.