This year’s First Candle Windflower Ball celebrated the event’s 10th anniversary and honored some important contributors to the cause. If you don’t know about First Candle, you should. They probably had some impact on how you put your baby to sleep every night. Through efforts such as Back to Sleep, this group has been instrumental [...]

As school gets back in session, I am sure every Mommy-Blogger in the world is going to be blogging about first day of school jitters (for both parent and child) over the next few weeks. Nothing new here- yesterday was Kelly’s first day of first grade at a new school.
I could tell she was excited [...]

I am so glad Kelly can’t read my blog yet. She doesn’t know it is here. If she did, this blog would make her unnecessarily nervous. For now, this is my place to vent.
What is eating at me? The start of a new school! Kelly is about to start at a new elementary school in [...]

I love a good marketing campaign, so when the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA – you know, Jerry’s Kids!) called to ask if they could lock me up to have my friends bail me out of jail, I was all in.
The campaign was both clever and fun. They had a simple process for loading my contacts [...]

Sometimes I wonder whether this is a family blog, an industry blog, or a blog wholly dedicated to Swedish traditions. I guess it can be a little of all of these, since they are all so important to our family’s life.
Today, the topic is crayfish  yes, crayfish. As much as most Americans think that [...]

Times are changing! In response to increasing concern about consumer product safety, congress just passed the most sweeping consumer products legislation of years, decades, maybe ever. I have been tracking this legislation for about a year, even flying up to DC to meet with legislators on various topics.
In general, I am THRILLED with the new [...]

As Kelly turned six, we realized she was ready for an allowance. I don’t think there is any perfect time or way to do it, but we are pretty happy with our approach. We wanted to instill a sense of responsibility to ‘earn’ her allowance and also give her an idea about saving money.
We needed [...]

We all want to set good examples for our kids; washing our hands before dinner, using a seat belt at all times, crossing at the crosswalk, etc. But sometimes, we have to use our bad examples to make a point as well. No point in pretending to be perfect, right?
This was the case one morning [...]