Spring is here! Pending any awful pranks from Mother Nature, we will start being regulars at the park very soon. While we haven’t come close to listing all the wonderful parks the Fox Valley offers, here are 15 worth visiting this year. If we missed your favorite, leave it in the comments.

Reading is one of the most important life skills. Yet some children and adults will never know the joy reading can bring. So, how do we instill in our children the love of reading? Here are some steps that we can take to start fueling the desire to read even before they can.

My younger daughter came home from school recently with a library book. It was called “The Book with No Pictures.” She requested that I read it immediately, and I’m not proud to say that I tried to blow her off.

Eating at a restaurant with a child (or multiple children!) can be a challenge. Time ticks about 10x slower when you’re awaiting the food for a hungry child. I put together these Restaurant Busy Kits and keep them right in my car. They’ve been a real sanity saver and have made dinners out actually enjoyable again!

Just about every birthday from age 5-30 was included, with mostly every other year of their twenties. The idea was that my daughters would read the letters on that particular birthday. So, on their 10th birthday, they would read the letter for that year (one letter from one person for each of my daughters per birthday).

The annual Red Kettle Campaign goes a long way toward making sure families in need can still have a merry Christmas, says Robert J. Mueller, the Salvation Army’s greater Green Bay area coordinator. “As less fortunate families struggle to keep food on the table and roofs over their heads, we believe coming alongside these families during this time of year will matter.”

One of the ways that you might consider me “old-fashioned” is regarding thank-yous and showing gratitude. I am a HUGE proponent of thank-yous, but especially written thank-you cards. You might disagree. Some of my close friends do.

It’s been six months since I worked outside the home. In many ways, it feels like just yesterday that I was pulling into work. In other ways, it feels as though I haven’t worked for years. I am, by no means, an expert at being a stay-at-home mom.

If you were to ask me in college, where my kids were going to go to school, homeschooling would have been my last option. I had so many preconceived notions about what homeschooling was and the families that chose to participate in it.

A few years back, I had one of my most memorable “mean mom” moments. We have a rule that each morning, the boys are to clean their room. For a few months, they started pushing back and playing with toys instead of cleaning up.