+J.M.J.+Last week I shared my best tips for traveling with kids in this post here, and today I wanted to share how we plan little weekend getaways on a small budget. Consider the Location We tend to make trips in a 2 - 3.5 hour range away for weekends. This is close enough that Ethan [...]
+J.M.J.+We travel quite frequently thanks to grandparents on opposite ends of the country and a love of weekend getaways. (I have boarded well over 100 planes with my kids in tow and taken more little weekend car trips than I can count!) This post is going to tackle all of our best tips and tricks [...]
+J.M.J.+ We talked all about breakfast in this last post found here - let's move on to lunch! A lot of people like to make enough of dinner for lunch the following day, but I would rather come up with simple lunches I can throw together and save those precious dinner leftovers for another night [...]
+J.M.J.+ I know I love seeing what other people are eating when I'm stuck in a food rut, so I hope this gives you some inspiration! Below I have photos of many of our breakfasts, along with links to where you can find the recipes or simple instructions to make them. Our girls eat what [...]
+J.M.J.+ Doulas are not yet mainstream - with only 7% of mother using them there are a lot of misconceptions and confusion surrounding them. Why would you hire a complete stranger to be with you during birth? Why not just rely on your husband? Plus, I’m not a first-time mom anymore - why would I [...]
+J.M.J.+ We have paid off $23,031.00 of student loan debt in two years on an income less than the national average. It was our only debt and it is a relief like no other to have this gone. Ethan graduated with his bachelors degree debt free - this was from a post graduate program. We [...]
+J.M.J.+ I am frequently asked about how I entertain my kids, and there has been a huge surge in these questions since I announced our most recent pregnancy. How do I handle morning sickness with other kids? How am I entertaining them? This title is a bit of a trick because the answer really is [...]
+J.M.J.+ God has blessed Ethan and I with our fourth child. It is actually quite surreal just 7 weeks since losing baby Andrew Mary to be expecting again. I had no warning something was wrong during Andrew's pregnancy until he was gone, so I wanted to make sure that I didn't have some sort of [...]
+J.M.J.+ Once Ethan had a surprise waiting for me when I returned home with Philomena from a visit to see my parents. He had secretly commissioned a friend to build us a custom home altar. It's simple but perfect for our current stage in life. We had utilized a bookshelf for this purpose in the [...]
+J.M.J.+ A year and a half ago I published one of my most viewed posts ever: My Little Kids Don't Use Screens. Ever. Here's why. (You may enjoy giving that a read then coming back here.) I explained how studies show that the more little kids' brains are hyper stimulated by screens, the more it [...]
