MississippiMom.com - Blogging about Family and Faith in the Hospitality State

January 2, 2025

Guacamole and The Easy Way Out

Sometimes it’s best to take the easy way out. To the perfectionist daughter of the man whose photo is probably found beside the very definition of the word, those words feel like laziness as my fingers fly over the keyboard tonight. We do hard things here. We don’t take shortcuts. If we do things, we do them well. We don’t take the easy way out. Not in high school when your science teacher says you should take two advanced science classes your senior year. And not now either. Except when it seems possible to “work smarter, not ...

January 1, 2025

The Writer Returns

Day one. Dipping my big toe back into the world of writing. Just about as timidly as I would dip it into the cold water of my grandmother’s pine tree-shaded pool on the first warm day of spring. And, just like that cold water, I know it’s best just to plunge in deep and fast and not look back. The shock to my system will pass, and the water will warm, and eventually, I’ll swim so fast I won’t feel the cold. I’ll know it’s warmer to stay in the water. Writing is like that when it’s been a while. The words are there, deep in the parts of my mind that have been put on ...

July 10, 2024

Indescribable Atlas Adventures – And a LONG OVERDUE Review

About a year or so ago, I received a review copy of the Indescribable Activity Book for Kids by Louie Giglio. It arrived in all its new book glory looking exactly like this: Then it promptly disappeared. The next time I saw it, it looked like this: Ok. That's a bit of an exaggeration. This is what it looked when I found it in the back of my car after more than a few trips to Houston and back. The window for review was long closed, the book was well loved, and I've had more than just a little guilt nagging at me because I never reviewed it. So, when I received a review copy of Indescribable Atlas Adventures, I jumped at the ...

January 8, 2024

3 Ways to Start the New Year with Faith

Happy new year! It's January 8, and one of my kids has just gone back to school. The others are easing into the new year, and I'm sipping coffee at my leisure like my Christmas tree isn't still up. I blame my husband and his spectacular Christmas gift. When the coffee's this good, I must sit down and savor it. Our Classical Conversations Community doesn't resume until next week so I have a little time to prepare and plan before we kick off a new semester. This morning, however, I'm not rushing to start the new things or reflecting on the past. I'm just sitting in the present. The blue sky is studded with fluffy, white clouds. The ...

December 22, 2023

Parenting Hacks for a Successful, Less Stressful New Year

Let's be honest for a moment, ok? Motherhood is hard. Parenting is hard. It starts with sleepless nights and crying babies and morphs over the years to sleepless nights as you worry over out-late college students, sassy teenagers, and more laundry than you could ever have imagined. As moms, we have to manage it all. I'm not always good at it. If I ever manage to keep all the balls in the air, I probably hurt everyone's feelings in the process because the stress of keeping things moving ends up breaking me down. And, I don't always pay enough attention to my kids. There. I said it. I need to be a more attentive parent, and one of the ...