June, 2018 | PulseonParenting

Step 6 for an Extraordinary Life: Make Space

Jun 27 2018

Joanna Gaines of Fixer Upper and I should be best friends. After reading The Magnolia Story I learned we have a ton in common. We love to cook. Neither of us wants to upgrade our engagement diamonds from modest to monstrous. We both lean toward introversion. And visual clutter drives us crazy. I can feel my blood pressure rise when the kitchen counter goes MIA under newspapers, books and whatever random items my kids drop upon it. I avoid my office space for all the piles. To help calm myself, I placed a kitch-y towel on our mantle to keep myself from…

Jun 21 2018

My daughter loves to play games. Clue. Battleship. Uno. (She totally cleans up with the last one, so we’re sending her to Vegas when she’s 21.) And we love to indulge her, being players of games ourselves. But when she pulls out the Game of LIFE, I’d rather play the game of hey-let’s-chose-something-else. Darn you, Hasbro. LIFE is hard. (just like the real deal.) I always need the players’ manual at the ready because the rules are so complicated. (If only actual life had one of these.) And I don’t like the stakes. Whoever retires into fabulousness (chose either “Countryside…

Jun 14 2018

When I hear those two words, “growing pains” that little memory file in my brain opens and B.J. Thomas starts crooning in my head: As long as we got each uh-uh-ther… . It happens to you, too, right? Or maybe not. I know, I’m hinting at my age (note the pants in the photo above) by recalling the 1980’s family sitcom Growing Pains and its earworm*** of a theme song. And about the time that saccharin prime-time show aired I had exactly what the title described: (actual) growing pains. But what are they, really? “Growing pains” are often used to describe any…

Jun 07 2018

Something was not right. I looked at the packaging on my favorite protein powder to see how it described the Stevia content and saw “stevia leaf extract.” That worried me, being that in my post How to Approach the Sugar Epidemic I stated that only stevia leaf glycosides were approved by the FDA for food use. And that anything other than that, like stevia leaf extract, was not and could cause unwanted side effects. Ok, I had a bit of a panic, as my whole family used the protein powder and loves it. As it turns out, I worried…

Jun 06 2018

I originally published this post on June 22, 2017. Here is a reprint to kick off Summer 2018. Happy riding, everyone! My family lives in a free-spirited town. A place where you can’t say I’ve seen it all, but you regularly get a little closer. Like the other day. As my favorite barista was handing me a much-needed java, I spotted, making a bee-line across the local highway, a bicyclist pulling a child trailer. Even in my coffee-deprived state I was present enough to think OMG, that’s dangerous, then realized with relief that the trailer did not chauffeur…

Archive - June 2018

Step 6 for an Extraordinary Life: Make Space

the Game of LIFE

Growing Pains: What They are and What to Do About Them

A Clarification About Stevia

Rules of the Road: Hand Signals for Safe Bicycling