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I Married YOU, Not Your Family
Photo by cottonbrofrom Pexels Growing up and getting married means that we leave our family of origin and start a new family. We’re not asked to forget about mom and dad, but we do need to remember that our spousal relationship is important to take care of because it becomes the solid ground where we plant our new roots.
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Empty Nest – Syndrome or Summit?
Janine: I remember when we had three children under the age of 5. One thing I fantasized about was being able to leave the house someday WITHOUT a diaper bag. I didn’t know if that day would ever come. In the midst of the wild and crazy parenting years, I couldn’t imagine what life would be like after kids. Before we knew it…our youngest child went off to college.
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Getting Teens to Talk
Do you have teenagers? Maybe this sounds familiar: Interested Parent: “How was school today sweetheart?” Moping teenager, “Fine.” “Is everything OK?” “Yup.” “Anything you want to talk about?” “Nope.” Good talk.
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50 Ways to Engage Kids
Photo Credit: Jahir Martinez on Unsplash.com “A truly rich man is one whose children run into his arms when his hands are empty.” This anonymous quote (sexist wording and all) caught our eye and caused us to reflect on fun times with our kids. As wonderful as children are, they add expense to any family budget. Kids need love and attention; they thrive when you engage with them. Fortunately engaging doesn’t have to break the budget. Engaging also creates screen-free time, lifelong values and memories. We’ll close with a list of 50 of our favorite ways to engage kids that cost little to nothing and are all screen-free.
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Parenting 101 – United We Stand
One of the most challenging things in our marriage was learning to raise responsible, caring, well-adjusted children. Now that our children are adults, we are back to child-rearing mode with our two year old granddaughter who lives with us. Here are 6 lessons we’ve learned.
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The Happiest Place on Earth – NOT (this time)
We recently went to Disneyland with our adult daughter and our 2 year old granddaughter. All three adults had high hopes for a fun-filled family time at the “happiest” place on earth. When naysayers told us we were crazy for taking a two year old to Disneyland, we scoffed at them. We’ve been there, done this before. But we hadn’t been there, done that with a toddler. The crowds, a cranky toddler, and plenty of unmet expectations led to a communication breakdown that was a debacle for all of us. None of us ended up having much fun and we left a day early.
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We Come First
Marriage is hard, I don’t care who you are. That’s why we write this blog, and that’s probably why you’re reading it. The fail rate on marriages is way too high. How did things get so screwed up? How do we build a better “us”, rather than letting our marriage take the slow slide into a hole we can’t climb out of? We propose this: we have to put “us” (our marriage relationship) first.
