My days, most of them anyway, are filled with family, friends and many, many car trips in my van.

I help my daughters with homework in the afternoon, write blog posts and articles when I can, and drink slow glasses of wine with my husband after dinner on the weekends.

I’ve been with Chad for 15 years of marriage, add another 3 ½ to that of dating him and we’ve been together for more than half of my life.  The time I have known him has outlasted the time before I knew him.  Funny how that works.  People you meet and fall in love with, who have no relation to you in any way, suddenly become your family.   And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Hope is nine and loves to ride horses.  She is in fourth grade and has the most amazing red/auburn hair you’ve ever seen.  From the time she was a toddler, women would stop me on the street and ask where I got her hair colored.  What on earth would possess me to color my two-year-old’s hair?  It is entirely natural and I can only point to her aunt who has traces of the same color throughout her own hair.

She reads everything she can get her hands on and, at the dinner table teaches us loads of science and astronomy facts that her father and I would have never known otherwise. She amazes us.

Naomi is five and makes all of us laugh.  All. the. time. She’s a twirler of full skirts, a consumer of string cheese, and a picker of small flowers for any adult female in her life.  I have hundreds.  Her blonde hair reminds me of her daddy, and the laughter in her eyes reminds me of my father.

She constantly has a small stuffed animal under her left arm {any animal will do} and does not leave home without it. She has recently entered Kindergarten and her constant questions and bundled up energy might just be the death of her teacher. We are loving every minute of it.

She makes me happy to be a Mama.