Who Do We Put First, Ourselves or Others?

Who do we put first ourselves or others?

By Celeste I keep thinking about the last point in this post I wrote about organizing our days into good, better and best. I’ve thought a lot about it. How should I know what is best and what is just good? I don’t know about you, but my day typically has about a million conflicting priorities. Often when I wake up in the morning I’ll lay there and think, “ok, what do I have to do today? Well, I really should exercise this morning. Oh, and I have to make cleaning the kitchen today a priority. I should make the… Read More

Celeste vs MailChimp.  Subtitle:  Subscribe to Our New Newsletter!

By Celeste Confession:  I pretty much stopped following any blogs when Google Reader died.  RIP.  I did sign up for Feedly, but just didn’t get in the habit.  Now that I’m a blogger, I’m trying to pick the habit back up.  I’m very curious to know if/how you follow blogs??  Bloglovin? Facebook? Email subscriptions?  You don’t? Speaking of email subscriptions. . . I need to apologize to all those who have signed up for our email subscriptions.  I’m fighting a losing battle with MailChimp trying to figure out how to correctly format these emails with the right links.  Every week… Read More

Merry Christmas from Donny and Marie Osmond

By Celeste THIS. So, on Thanksgiving day, Rich and I received an email asking if we would be willing to participate in a Christmas lip sync contest for our church Christmas party the next week. !!!!!! Would we?!??? We would. Our friends, the McAllisters (with whom we were staying over Thanksgiving break) nicely let us waste their entire evening browsing YouTube trying to decide which song to do. We were leaning heavily toward this 1986 Fresh-Prince-of-Bel-Air-ish Christmas rap called “Chillin’ With Santa” that Rich had unearthed. The Muppets’ Ringing of Bells also crossed our minds (we’re such big fans of… Read More

“Joy Will Return”: Taking Care of Yourself, Your Spouse and Your Marriage During Infertility

By Rachel Nielson This post is fifth of a six-part series: Confronting Infertility in Marriage I’m so honored to have Rachel guest posting for me today. To be honest, when I very first thought about starting this blog, I knew I wanted guest posting to be a HUGE part of it and I initially wondered, “Ooh I wonder if Rachel would post on my blog??” Rachel is a little out-of-my-league blog-wise. She is an editor of the Power of Moms blog and writes there frequently (sneak peak: I’m writing an upcoming post on guilt and heavily feature her recent article… Read More

The Years Before We Met Our Baby: The Unexpected Blessings of Infertility

By Camber Hess This post is the fourth of a six-part series: Confronting Infertility in Marriage Today’s post is by my friend Camber, who is another former (and missed) Iowa City citizen. Camber inspires the heck out of me. I live in awe of her and her strength. She’s so helpful, quick to laugh and just unbelievably sweet. She doesn’t mention this in her post, but she told me it would be okay to share that just three months ago they lost their second child, Sarah, who was just four days old. Camber writes the story so so beautifully here… Read More