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Cooking for a Crowd: Banana Bread Cake

July 2nd, 2009 · No Comments

I’ve been scurrying through my recipes in preparation for our annual beach-fest.  This is the weekend that we, along with my 6 siblings, their families and my mother gather on the coast of Maine for sun and fun…  All together we are 7 siblings+6 spouses+ 24 cousins+ 1 mother.  We’ve been getting together for the [...]

Tags: Food

Serendipity: Ouch!

March 26th, 2009 · No Comments

Many pieces had to fall in to place to make us reach a point where we decided to have all 9 of us live together. My mother passed away and my nephew’s non-custodial mother moved away from the area where my brother lived. He wouldn’t have left there if they were still around. My husband [...]

Tags: Family

No Allowance – Paychecks Instead

March 25th, 2009 · 4 Comments

The kids are busy, I get that. They have school, homework, soccer, etc. But I still want them to contribute to the house and its upkeep. Yet getting them to do chores is like asking them to swallow hot coals. Still, I needed to solve this problem. Parenting advisers say, “Pick Your Battles.” Well, this [...]

Tags: Finance · Home · housekeeping

Will The Economy Force Us To Redefine Family?

March 10th, 2009 · 4 Comments

The economic forecast is grim. Cloudy with a chance of relatives… moving in. Many of us our looking for ways to tighten our belts, many are in dire straits, dealing with job loss, plummeting values on all our assets; it ain’t easy and it doesn’t look like it is easing up any time soon. Yesterday [...]

Tags: Family · Finance

The Company I Keep

March 3rd, 2009 · 2 Comments

For this week’s column, I am going to cheat just a little bit. See, when I accepted the challenge to write stuff for this wonderful site, I hoped to bring a working Mom’s perspective with each and every post. I figured that that was the reason for my being at this particular table.
I [...]

Tags: Fun

Fading Moments

January 30th, 2009 · 2 Comments

One girlfriend from back home, four flirtini’s and six full seasons of Sex and the City leave me thinking about life, love and friendships. Call it nostalgia or just call me crazy, but why does life always seem sweeter in memories?
Before I moved away for university, I had a full life. I had a little [...]

Tags: friendship

Family Economics

January 29th, 2009 · 4 Comments

One of the things I realized after a while of being an at-home mom, was how similar running a home was to running a business. While the “widgets” you produce are children and hopefully happy adults, in some ways, it’s very analogous to any other business venture.
For example, household finances are just another version [...]

Tags: Finance

Being a (Step) Mom:
What My Husband and Step-Son Taught Me

January 27th, 2009 · 4 Comments

When Stew and I met, he had recently moved here (Portland, Maine) from the Buffalo area, where his son, Mo, age 8 still lived. Stew hated being so far from his son and as soon as he and I became serious, vacations and major holidays revolved around spending time with Mo. That was as it [...]

Tags: Parenting

Do You Watch TV Shows With Your Kids?

January 26th, 2009 · 7 Comments

I’m sitting here typing while the boys watch shows on the television. Currently we’re giggling at an episode of “The Suite Life With Zach and Cody”. Other favorites of late include “Ben10″, “Hannah Montana”, and “Star Wars: Clone Wars.” I was discussing it with a friend recently and realized that most of [...]

Tags: Activities · Parenting

What Teachers Want

January 21st, 2009 · 6 Comments

I work in a middle school.  Middle school is that scary place where teens and preteens try to figure out who they are and where they belong and what in the world to do with their hormones and deodorant, all the while being expected to do their homework and pass their classes and navigate the [...]

Tags: Education · Parenting








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