Do you have a good relationship with your in-laws, any relationship? There are many reasons why pursuing a positive relationship with your in-laws is a good thing, especially if you have children.

What do you do to take care of yourself, or how do you choose to spend your quiet moments? Wishing you plenty of quiet moments to yourself that make you thankful for your noise.

I will let you in on a little secret.  I am the chaotic mom in this story.  Between work, school, baseball, golf lessons, swimming lessons and a traveling husband, life is chaotic.  As strange as it may sound, Costco understands my chaos and helps make life easier.</p>

I love story time.  Story time was one of the first activities I brought my girls to when I became a stay-at-home mom.  I have only had the opportunity to attend the story time at the Weyers Hilliard Library in Howard. But, there are many different story times offered throughout the Brown County Library System.

Parenting is hard and requires a sense of humor.  It also doesn’t hurt to ask for a little divine intervention once in a while.  Thus, we pray as a family before dinner, and the adorable prayers of my twin three-year-olds are both entertaining and impressive.

Perhaps I’m not the only one, but I often think about how things were different when I was a child. It might be because I’m in the midst of raising my own children. It might be because I miss simpler times. The world may have undergone a drastic change. Whatever the reason, one thing I reflect on often is the difference in babysitting now versus twenty years ago.

I went into the final days of my 42-week pregnancy armed with hopes and plans of what my experience as a new mom would be like. I arrived at the hospital on my induction date with a nervous smile and the naive expectations only first-time moms possess.

What if your child couldn’t eat candy? That would take away a HUGE chunk of Halloween. This was the problem Becky Basalone, a mom in Tennessee, faced in 2012. At a local Trunk-or-Treat event sponsored by her local food allergy group FACET, she offered non-food treats out of her car’s trunk.

I remember the days of holding friends’ babies, while longing for children of my own. The one thing that didn’t cross my mind at the time, while smelling those sweet newborns and kissing those squishy cheeks, was how short a time period a baby is actually a baby.

Unfortunately, cancer has touched so many of our lives, and as many of you know, October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. For the past eight years, when I would start to see the pink cancer ribbons come out, I cringed. It reminded me of my mother’s fight. It brought back memories of those fearful days. It scared me that it would come back.