The first stop on our camping vacation was with family in Minnesota, and we were finally able to check the Como Park Zoo in St Paul off our ...

I have a friend for whom wishes of a "Happy Memorial Day" or a "Happy Veterans' Day " really grate on her nerves.  T...

I was recently asked to submit a quote for an article on a site called MusciansFriend.com.  They were working on a piece for Veteran's D...

All my family ( including the dog ) left yesterday for fun at the cottage .  I needed to stay behind because, well, part of running our own ...

I got to spend Father's Day with both my husband and my dad this year.  I don't know if that's ever happened before.  My dad...

One of my original editors at Babble when I used to blog there (before the site was bought by Disney and turned into a useless collection of...

A friend of ours in town is getting deployed again.  He's headed to Afghanistan before the month is up.  This news has hit me harder tha...

(Quinn organizing his trick-or-treat haul.) I think the kids are about at the end of their Halloween candy.  We try to have them just ...

I’ve been using most of my writing time lately to edit the manuscript I’m putting together.  I’m compiling my husband’s and my email corre...

Ian’s at Ft Knox this week.  He has a week of Army training to do, then he’ll be home for a bit, then two more weeks of training somewhere ...

Ian has drill this weekend. His current Army unit is only about 90 minutes away and he’ll be home tonight, so this is nothing.  It’s just ...

My husband and I have always managed to arrange our lives in such a way that one of us is always home with our kids.  When Aden was born Ia...

It hit me the other night as I was trying (unsuccessfully) to get to sleep that this was about the time I was originally expecting Ian home...

I’ve written about my ambivalence for military themed holidays and flag waving before.  I worry about anything that glorifies war while a...

All pain is relative.  We each of us live in our own skin and view the world through a lens crafted from our own experience.  Sometimes we ...

Ian’s been home from Iraq for about a month and a half now.  The time feels longer.  I can remember clearly enough how things were two m...

I am so fortunate to have spent over half my life with my husband, Ian.  I’ve written about him before in an introduction , a post about how...

What a great week!  Lots of stress woven through bits of it and happiness to the point of feeling drained sometimes, but overall some amaz...