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Hosting or Being Hosted: Helpful Ideas to Get Your Heart & Home Thanksgiving Ready
We interrupt our regularly scheduled program to bring you… your relatives. Raise your hand if you’re prepped and organized for Thanksgiving. It’s okay… most people aren’t. You’ve got this though. You’re stronger than you think, you can juggle more than you realize, and I have some tips. Depending on your hosting situation, I’ve crafted three possible scenarios. And within each of those, I’m giving you different levels of being ready. Pick and choose according to your home, drunk uncles, and level of crazy that’s on its way. 1. They’re Only Coming for Dinner If you were raised in a casa where your parents regularly hosted Thanksgiving, good news! Having people…
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Starting the Fall Season with Non-Annoying Orange Autumn Items for All You Undercover Pumpkin Spice Fans
If you live in my area of SoCal, you know it doesn’t exactly feel like fall yet. With temps still bouncing into the 80s this week, I can barely wear shoes much less think about sipping hot cider. But autumn’s comin’! I gathered these items with my faithful readers in mind. (That’s you!) Most of us aren’t hard-core pumpkin spice fans, but most people love pumpkin something. Are you a low-key, undercover pumpkin spice fan? I get it. Do you occasionally dabble with pumpkin spice in the kitchen? Same here. Maybe you cringe at shirts that say “Live, Laugh, Love Pumpkin Spice” or “My Blood Type is Pumpkin Spice” or…
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A Neighborhood Divided: Years of Friends, Months of Loss, Weeks of Grief
When we moved out of Baja and back to Cali, I wasn’t what you’d call… excited. Besides the whole experience feeling anti-climactic (we already lived in SoCal once), track houses aren’t really my jam. Apparently, the neighborhood cookie-cutter fairy put all of our floor plans on a blueprint and the creativity stopped after five. Five similar shapes, five coordinating paint schemes, and that was it. Match-y match-y ain’t my style. Plus, I didn’t see a whole lot of ministry taking place between getting the mail and pulling in trashcans. I don’t mean to sound like a whiner. I’m truly grateful for Model #3 to call home and know millions around…
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Yellow Lights, Red Flags: Warning Signs That Help Keep Our Noisy Lives in Check
I ran a big fat yellow light this week. Actually, if you must know, it looked a tad orange. How a human brain can go back and forth that many times in a matter of 1.8 seconds is beyond me, but there I was: Slow down. Punch it. I’m good. This isn’t good. Cops? No cops. I got this. I don’t got this. Gahhh! Don’t judge. I’m guessing you’ve been in an orange light situation at some point, yes? Those split-second decisions don’t exactly give me time to wrangle my best drawl, sing Jesus Take the Wheel and then wait for Him to move. Most of the time I’m relying…
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New News – Welcome to the Inside Scoop!
Since most lists have at least three points, here are mine: Uno, thank you for opening this new post. Whether you’re stretching your way to getting out of bed, busy making breakfast, lounging with your café, hustlin’ on a treadmill, waiting in a line, watching TV you’re not really into, or winding down before you zonk out, I am grateful you clicked here. B, a writer friend reminded me that my email list has only been used for alerting you about new blog posts and that you might want to hear about other insider things going on with me. I’m not sure I’m that interesting, but I’m ready to change…
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15 Favorite Family-Friendly Flicks to Watch at Home With the Kids This Weekend
There are tons of great animated movies that we adults can love right alongside the littles, but this is a list of our family’s favorite real-life flicks when our kids were in elementary and middle school. Depending on your strict meter, most of these are for ages 8/10 and up, and they’re all rated G or PG. Even when I got a movie recommendation from a friend, I still jumped on a review site to double-check how appropriate it was for our kids. My favorite is pluggedin.com from Focus on the Family, but crosswalk.com, movieguide.org and kids-in-mind.com are also great. In alphabetical order, so no one gets their feelings hurt……
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When Daily Practice Doesn’t Make Perfect
Lesson #1 Around ten years old I got ushered to a piano bench by a concert pianist. She seemed kind, I was cluelessly optimistic, and my parents paid good money for the woman to deal with me for two years. If you don’t know my family, my father also earned the title of a concert pianist. So it would seem logical for the two of us to meet weekly in the formal living room for 30 minutes so he could enlighten me with everything he knew on our own piano. But my parents were well aware that teaching his [athletic, stubborn, distractable] daughter himself wouldn’t be the best idea. Instead,…
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Home Sweet Trailer in Baja: Abraham’s Forever Faith in My Face
I am no longer a journaler. Journaler? That’s a weird word. I engaged my pens decades ago, especially when the subject matter revolved around boys, but then I tapered. Since then I’ve started and stopped more than start-stop technology in city traffic, but I just can’t get into it. So now I use them as notebooks, and I’m totally fine with that. No more guilt. For years I couldn’t figure out why I didn’t want to journal anymore until I realized the list involved reasons I didn’t want to admit. Mix together slight perfectionism and the constant inner critic of an Enneagram one, with a full schedule and a woman…
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Corner Office Syndrome as a Boss: When it’s Always Lonely at the Top of the Business or Ministry
A few years ago I reported the results of a missionary survey I did and was surprised by their answers. (Especially when they matched mine.) With global loneliness at an all-time high, I thought I’d take a closer look into the phenomenon where some people might not look. The old cliché, “It’s lonely at the top” rings loud and true… 92% of missionaries I interviewed said yes to this question: Do you ever suffer from Corner Office Syndrome? (Knowing a ton of people but not having any real friends.) “Totally. I have lots of friends on Facebook, but nobody checks on me; I always have to reach out. It’s hard…
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All I Want for Christmas This Year is a Book. And Star Wars Baby Yoda.
If Christmas prep has you clicking your orders more than shopping in stores, this post is for you. Check out these popular, high-ranking books for everyone on your mostly-always-nice list. Or buy them for yourself and call it a day. Merry Christmas to you! (Happy Reminder: when you purchase from my links, Amazon throws me a modest kickback, but it costs you nothing. Gracias and Merry Everything!) This is the Way: Star Wars: The Mandalorian Even though I’ve never been a die-hard Star Wars fan, this new series got me ploppin’ on the couch and cuddlin’ up with my guys every Friday night for the newest episode. And who doesn’t…
