Why This Blog Has Been Neglected

This blog has been sadly neglected for over a year now and I'm not sure if I have any followers out there anymore. But I feel like I want to gather some of my thoughts and experiences here again. Instagram generally works better for me as a way to keep our family journal these days but I share quite a bit in my weekly Power of Families newsletters and I figured I might as well put the personal parts of those newsletters here so I have all that in one place. I'll start by sharing those newsletters then see what happens from there.

I can't actually believe that I used to blog so regularly here - how in the world did I find the time? You'd think I'd have more time now that all the kids are in school, off at extracurricular activities or busy doing their own thing. Not only does it feel like I don't have time to write, I don't have as much that I feel comfortable sharing. I felt good about sharing stories of the naughty and cute things my little kids did on this blog. But I feel much more limited now about what is OK to share now that my kids are older. I celebrate their accomplishments and fun activities on Instagram but there are plenty of challenges and issues that need to stay private when it comes to older kids.

Plus I feel guarded about what I want to put out there regarding my personal life. I see critical comments on my sisters' blogs and remember a few not-so-nice comments I received here in the past and I shy away from sharing my thoughts and feelings.Whenver I'd publish a blog post with content that I thought maybe some people might view negatively, I'd get all anxious and worried about what people were thinking and what comments I might get. So I just backed away.

But I feel like I have some things to share that might be helpful to people outside my immediate circle, so we'll see how this goes and maybe I'll make this a private blog. I don't know. I'm just figuring it out as I go. But I feel like I should be making some effort here again.

Anyway, here's a little bit about me and I'll share some of what is going on with everyone else in my family in other posts.

About a year ago, I handed Power of Moms over to my partner April and started Power of Families where moms and DADS can learn and share as they strive to be the best parents they can be. I've wanted to create a community of purposeful parents as a companion to the community of deliberate mothers that April and I built for quite some time now and the timing finally felt right.

I've got a new podcast called Power of Families Radio, send out a weekly newsletter and offer lots of free resources plus some paid programs. We've got about 70,000 parents who are members of Power of Families and it's feeling manageable and meaningful for the most part.

Looking back, I realize now that I let Power of Moms control way too much of my life for the 10 years that I was running it.  I held myself to impossibly high standards and got a LOT done but at a pretty steep cost. I really really wanted to help every mom and family that I could possibly help and spent pretty much every moment when my kids didn't need me and when I wasn't sleeping on Power of Moms stuff - and while I was always telling moms that they needed down time and didn't need to feel guilty about relaxing and taking time for themselves, I used every bit of time I ever had to myself to write articles and make podcast episodes and create programs to help families. I didn't watch TV. I didn't read. I did exercise regularly and protect my sleep but I totally forgot how to relax and have fun. And that wasn't good for me or my family.

I've learned to cut myself a lot more slack and be less intense and perfectionistic with Power of Families than I was with Power of Moms. If I get busy with something else and don't write a newsletter one week or skip doing my usual weekly podcast episode, I'm not stressed about it (and no one else seems to mind one bit).

I have a long ways to go when it comes to re-learning how to have fun and relax, but I think I'm in a much better place than I was a year ago in a lot of ways. It's not just Power of Families. I'm working on letting go of a lot of things that have been causing me to feel like I'm pretty much always a clenched fist. While I had so many little children and so many responsibliities outside my home, routines and schedules were vital to my sanity and focused, effective work filling every possible moment felt vital, I've realized it just doesn't work to live life like that forever. I'm learning to let things slide sometimes, to let myself go with the flow more, to be less deliberate and purposeful and just enjoy the moment from time to time.

I do a long hard hike with a friend every week and love the conversations and fresh air and exercise (we go in the early mornings to avoid the heat of the summer, we strap cleats on our shoes to hike over the ice in the winter - we've been going every week for about 5 years now).

I have some good times with Oliver and Silas every other day as they are doing 50% homeschool (I'll write more about that later). I just didn't feel like I was getting enough time with them and they are so fun to teach so I set up this arrangement with their school and they are taking some really great classes with the best teachers at their school on A days then they are home with me on B days and we do history, reading, writing, and lots of interesting projects together. They were wanting to do something different and 8th grade seemed like the right time to switch things up before they are in high school next year and grades count towards college admission and everything gets more complicated.

Our kitchen is being remodeled and it is taking WAY longer than expected and costing a lot more than expected. So there's a lot of stress there. But I'll save that for another post.

I'll write more later. Got to go eat the pizza Jared just brought home since our kitchen isn't functional right now and I've learned to let go of my the idea that I will make a homemade healthy dinner every night like I've generally done so religiously for so long.

Trip to NYC with Isaac

Last week it was my son Isaac's turn for a special one-on-one trip (I took my daughter Eliza to England a while back). When I saw some round trip tickets to NYC for just $250 each, we decided it was time to go visit my brother, Eli, and family who live on the upper west side in Manhattan and have a fun adventure together in the Big Apple. Some highlights were: driving through Times Square at midnight right after we arrived at the airport with Frank Sinatra's "New York New York" blaring (such a fun idea of my brother's!) visiting the Statue of Liberty (first time I've actually gotten off on the island and gone up inside, fun to share that first with Isaac) and Ellis Island (where so many our our ancestors began their new life in America) spending some time at the somber, beautifully-done 9-11 museum and memorial (Isaac was born 2 months before 9-11 and I was clutching him in my arms when I saw those planes hit the World Trade Center on TV so it was meaningful to visit the memorial together) walking across the Brooklyn Bridge and seeing the amazing architecture along the High Line in Chelesa eating a lot of delicious food (bagels, pizza, gelato, Levain cookies, excellent food at Eli and Julie's house, and Eli and Juilie set up a "food crawl" for us where we had appetizers, dinner and dessert at different excellent spots one night) hanging out with Eli and Julie and their awesome little kids as we explored the city together and hung out in their great little 5th floor walk-up apartment And of course there were not-so-wonderful moments like when we got caught in a serious rainstorm in Central Park and it was super cold and pretty miserable or when found ourselves packed into a dense crowd of people whille trying to watch the NYC marathon and the kids were crying and everyone was hungry. But, as my mom always says, crisis + time = humor. And we were quickly laughing about those inevitable crazy moments. Anyway, if you want to see more photos from our trip, check them out here. TIPS FOR ONE-ON-ONE TIME After my trip to England with Eliza, I shared links to some good material on why one-on-one time with our kids is so important and how we can make it happen (in little every-day ways as well as rare big-trip ways). But it looks like the links didn't work for some people. So here are those resources again: POST: One-on-One Time with our Kids: Why We Must and How We Can PODCAST EPISODE: One-on-One Time Tips and Ideas

A CURE FOR COMPLAINING AND A SURE PATH TO MORE HAPPINESS We have a major kitchen remodel going on right now. As with pretty much every project in the world, it's taking way longer than hoped and proving to be more expensive and stressful than anticipated. We've been living without a real kitchen for three months now, two of our bathrooms were disabled for the past two months making it so all of us have had to share one bathroom, iit is super cold in our house with a whole exterior wall removed and no finished walls or insulation in yet, and the house is constantly being covered in dust (which makes a clean freak like me crazed after a while). So there's been a fair amount of complaining around here (especially from me, I admit). Have you noticed that it's hard to be happy when you're complaining? Have you noticed that when you focus on gratitude, life is just a lot better? When I focus on how lucky I am to have running water, to have electricity, to have a house that us usually warm and dry, and to have food to cook in my make-shift kitchen rather than thinking about the discomforts involved, life suddenly becomes a lot brighter. So this week, in honor of my own need to focus more on gratitude and on the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, I wanted to share these resources with you: 8 Ways to Fill November with Thanksgiving - Check out these simple and meaningful ideas to help your family really feel the joy of gratitude this month. (Includes a 7-minute video highlighting the best ideas and lots of great further ideas in the comments.) Why Gratitude Really Matters - in this week's Power of Families Radio episide, I read three popular posts on gratitude. Each post offers stories and concrete ideas to help you pump up the gratitude in your personal life and in your family and enjoy all the happiness it will bring. I hope you'll find some ideas that will be really helpful to your family as you read and listen!

Europe Part 5 - Switzerland and Germany Summer 2017

OK, I've had this draft just about ready to post for a REALLY long time now. And I've realized I'm just not going to get around to adding in photos any time soon so I'm just going to post it and maybe someday I'll get a chance to add in photos!

Here are our highlights from Switzerland and Germany

- Oohing and aahing at the beauty of Switzerland together - such jaw-dropping beauty around every bend!

- Enjoying time with Tal and Anita, fun in their pool, delicious barbeque with all the traditional Swiss sausages, gentle hike above a breathtakingly blue lake to a beautiful overlook

- Going to church - singing in German, attending Anita's great lesson in YW about women and the priesthood (she was kind enough to say everything in English as well as Swiss German), meeting some great people

- Spending some time with old friends from Boston - Nancy and Dave Michaels. So great to catch up with them and enjoy another tasty barbeque plus

- Visiting Lucerne and meeting a social media friend who has reached out to me so kindly over the years - so fun to talk in person; strolling around the beautiful town and picturesque lake and checking out the medieval bridge there

- Getting so excited together when we saw the Lauterbrunner Valley for the first time - waterfalls everywhere, huge cliffs, snow-capped mountains in the distance - it was so spectacular and we were in awe that we were going to actually be able to stay right there (in a cute little mobile home at the Camping Juangfrau campground)

- Walking along the Lauterbrunner valley floor surrounded by intense beauty on a perfect cool evening and hiking up to feel the mist and power of a couple different waterfalls, watching paragliders like birds above us and watching them land in a field nearby

- Eating dinner on the deck of our little mobile home with a spectacular waterfall right there, so nice to enjoy a homecooked meal (simple pasta and sauce with cheese and canned beans but so nice to have a sit-down dinner after all the bread and cheese and cucumbers and grab-and-go sandwiches that have been our staples)

- Hiking and riding the tram at Issenfluh - relatively inexpensive tram ride to fields of amazing wildflowers (we hit the peak of wildflower season!) then a one hour steep-but-gorgeous hike to get to a mountain lake and then an absolutely amazing view of the three main snowy peeks of the area - Eiger, Jungfrau, and Monche.

- Paragliding - after weeding people's yards, washing people's dogs, and doing all sorts of jobs for anyone and everyone and saving up for months and praying (literally) every night that the weather would cooperate (they'd heard stories of how people were prevented from paragliding the whole time they were in Switzerland due to weather issues), the twins were beyond delighted when everything worked out perfectly for them to paraglide right off the edge of the cliff above Lauterbrunner and enjoy the feeling of flight plus the amazing scenery (strapped to an expert paraglider, of course). As it was almost Father's Day, we all chipped in to make sure Jared paraglided as well (he really wanted to go but was worried about how expensive everything was turning out to be and he's always so selfless, insisting everyone else go first or get what they want ahead of him). And even though Eliza hadn't quite saved up enough money and wasn't thinking she'd be able to paraglide with her broken arms and all, it turned out that there was no problem with her paragliding (when we asked, the guy said "it doesn't take any arms to paraglide!"). So we added to her savings a bit to make it work for her to paraglide - after her toughness through her injuries and her inability to do a lot of things she'd wanted to do on the trip, we were so happy to make sure she got a chance to do this very exciting thing she really wanted to do and COULD do with two broken arms!

- Swimming and picnicking at Lake Thun - we made our regular lunch of cheese and salami on crusty bread with cucumbers and carrots and cookies while sitting on a bench in a very nice semi-deserted campground right on the edge of this beautiful lake. It was such a gorgeous and peaceful setting and the boys had a great time swimming in that very cold refreshing water!

- Floating the river in Bern - took a while to find the right spot where you can jump of a pedestrian bridge and float to a safe place to get out, but we found it and the boys and Jared had SO much fun jumping and floating repeatedly while Eliza tried not to be too sad that she couldn't join them - it was not very fun for her! That river is just such a cool color and it was fun to do something that seemingly all the locals do all the time in the summer - we were surrounded by so many fun-loving Swiss people.

- Wandering through Bern Old Town on a lovely summer evening - so very charming! And we got to see the old clock strike the hour accompanied by automated little wooden people coming out to strike bells and do other little actions. Luckily we saw about 100 Asian tourists standing on the street looking up above an ancient archway so we knew to stop and look up ourselves!

- Visiting the lovely medieval French town of Colmar (HOT and sweaty but interesting to wander the city for a while and find some good lunch)

- Visiting Gengenbach - after lots of Google searching for the perfect little German town to visit in the few hours we had in Germany, we finally found something that was relatively on the way to Reims where we were headed for the night and that sounded like it might be a fun place to visit. We hit the jackpot! We drove to the outskirts of the town, parked the car, then walked for a few minutes to the middle of town where we were greeted by awesome live German folk music being played by a band in the amazingly charming storybookesque town square.  Turns out the town was celebrating the Corpus Cristi (google if if you want) and there were all these interesting displays everywhere. We had a lovely couple of hours exploring the little town's back alleys, checking out the ancient town wall that still stands, seeing how the old mill there works, and eating some of the best gelato ever for just one euro a scoop. It was so good we had to go back for a second round!

Here's Ashton's Video of Switzerland (and our final day back in London before heading back home):