Beyond Bringing Up Boys

I look down and wonder how the Fitbit step counter climbed so high. . . . Here's how it happened: What a beautiful morning as we climbed out of Atlanta and banked north. The Jet Blue pilot must have been headed home, because we made the trip in 2:05. Boston fog greeted us. Having been in Boston just 3 months ago, some of the sights were quite familiar: One of the highlights of the day was going with Zac and Danny to the Boston Public Library. The front of the library has a PBS station in it, so we listened to music and an interview. The biggest surprise was a beautiful fountain area in the middle of the library. It was so lovely that sometimes it is used for weddings. We also spent an hour at Boston Common. The diversity of the park was as beautiful as the landscape. We watched two wedding ceremonies and listened to some plaintive music performed by an elderly Chinese man. A little girl beside us fed crabapples to several grateful ducks. The day itse

As usual, they've overpacked.  Seriously, this IS their luggage for a WEEK! They'll fly to Boston for the day and catch up with one of Zach's best friends and a former student of Dr. B.  They'll leave from there for London about 9:00 tonight.  I was a bit unsettled after the partially detonated bomb that went off yesterday in the Tube .  I reminded myself last night that God does not provide grace for my imaginations.  So, here's praying that these two have a fabulous trip together and come home even closer than ever with memories for a lifetime! 

Waiting for my groceries! My name is Amy and I've been ordering groceries online for over a year now.   There, I said it.  I've seen discussion about it on Facebook from time-to-time and just trolled through, but kept mum that I was also a participant.  I felt so embarrassed.    The voices in my head were so shaming.   Not those kind of voices!  The kind that say if I were a better mom, a better wife, a better planner...   If I had it together, I could get my menu made and food shopping done in a timely matter... Those  kinds   of voices. In a previous post, I talked about how I finally conquered the menu planning .  But still, I would procrastinate shopping.  Because frankly, I just hate it.   Then I heard about the Wal-Mart grocery pick-up service.  It's free and super easy to use!  You just log into this page  and set up an account. Then, you have access to almost all of the same number of grocery items tha

Boston.  Very early in our trip planning, we began to realize that staying in Boston had a pretty high price point. Not only was there the cost of the room, plus associated taxes and fees, but there was usually a daily parking fee also. With a family of five, almost any hotel room would have been pretty close quarters too.  We like each other, most of the time, but should we push that??  No, we didn't think so. Here's what we would recommend: Rent a house outside of the city through VRBO or Airbnb. We chose this charming little cape cod in Waltham , MA, which is about 30 minutes east of Boston.  Purchase the pass for the T (That would be the subway and bus system governed by the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority - but everyone simply refers to the the system as "the T").We drove about 15-20 minutes from Waltham to the red line in Alewife and rode that into the city.  Start with an   Old Town Trolley Tour .  It g

Planning is a very big part of what I do. In fact, I often talk about the importance of it to my boys and listed it here .  It's a large part of why I think our home operates smoothly. But, I did have a couple of areas of my life that needed "cleaned-up."  Areas that I always seemed to procrastinate. (See, boys, I'm not perfect) I feel so much better getting that out in the open.  One of those areas was grocery shopping. I. Hated. It. I discovered in talking to other SAHM's, I wasn't alone. But, I needed a solution.  So, I started looking at why I hated it so much.  And, as I peeled back the layers here's what I discovered about me: I do not go to the store without a list, and I do not make a list without a menu, and making a menu seemed HARD.  Until, about 5 years ago.  I discovered plantoeat.com . I think that it was promoted at that time by Money Saving Mom . This software changed my life. Seriously. Well, part of it. I still actually had to sh

  Midweek last week, "Irma" became a household name. But, even then if you had told me that she was going to make her way up into northern Georgia, I would have been dubious.   David and I met at college in south Florida, and still have many dear friends who live in that sweet beach town. So, when we began to see reports that Irma was expected to hit S FL as a cat. 5, we became very concerned.  However, it seemed that with each new hurricane report, Irma was leaning west. And we felt certain that the place so special to us, along with those we love, would be safe. Ultimately, she made landfall in the Keys and hit the northwest coast of Florida pretty badly. She was so enormous though, that even as of this writing, we still have friends on the east coast of Florida without power.  Then she started moving north.  As I understand, this is the first time ever that a tropical depression warning was issued for metro Atlanta . The local schools were canceled through Wed