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Living in a small town has it’s perks, it literally take me 10 minutes  or less in traffic to get from one side to the other no matter what time of day it is, this was the biggest problem about living in Charlotte. When I wanted to get anywhere it took me 30-40 minutes to go just a few miles down the road, being a working mom  trying to pick one up from daycare and school before after hours was a feat most days! The perks though of living in a city, everything you need is right around the corner, no need to online shop on a daily basis.

So when we moved 600 miles north back to our home town I was devastated for more reason than one. When strangers would ask me how I liked living here I’d say awful things like, “It’s boring” “There’s nothing to do” “there are no good markets or shops here” and I realized that my little home town had much more to offer than all the negative feedback I gave it. So I huffed it and finally realized that I could drive 30 miles and just 30 minutes down the road, which would’ve been equivalent to 9 miles in Charlotte, to Costco, Whole Foods and a Super Target and for all else I’d buy local and give my all to Amazon through my prime membership.

I honestly don’t think I have ever taken more advantage of a membership like Amazon Prime, and although I’ve been a Prime member for over a decade and a half I have never seen so many Prime boxes arrive in the past 3 years.

Some of my recent Amazon Prime items are listed below:

Car and Home Items:

Collapsable Car Trash Bag 

Universal Baby Sun Shade 

Headrest Hanger Hook

Cargo Storage Basket for Groceries 

Moso Bamboo Odor Absorber

Kids Items:

Bentgo Lunch Box

Harness Backpack

Construction Toy Truck

Cake Maker Dough Play Set

Food Items:

Annies Mac and Cheese

Kashi Cereal Bars

Happy Shopping!!

This blog post will be part of a monthly series collaborating with other bloggers to co-host each our favorite things, we hope you enjoy this series and check out each of our other co-host through the links below!

Oh January, what a time for starting fresh and moving forward on the new year and what a better time than to discuss some of my favorite things. As I began this first post this month I started to think of the meaning of January, why this historically coldest month (at least here in Michigan) begins our new beginning and new year. History tells the story of how the Roman’s followed the lunar cycle and their calendars reflected the moon’s phases but often these days would fall out of sync with the seasons and therefore it needed to be corrected.

The solution was to use the Egyptian calendar which followed the solar cycle, so the Roman’s changed their 10 month calendar from starting in March and added two months, January and February. January, the new first month of the year was named after the Roman god Janus. Janus, the good doorways and beginnings, was portrayed as two-faced with one face looking back into the past while the other looked forward into the future. When I think of January this way it feels symbolic of how I begin my new year, tailoring my new year’s ambitions upon the reflection and lessons learnt from the year before. I am trying to begin and end each month this way as well this year, reflecting on the lessons learned of the month and how to optimize the following month to come out more knowledgable and on track than the month before.

I am looking forward to sharing  some of my ‘favorites’ as we will call them in these monthly posts and reflect on these at the end of each month as we move forward into the following month.

• Favorite place I went this month: The hairdresser, does that even count?! Well for me it’s a rarity that I take any self-care or do anything like that, so for me this counts big time. It was just a simple cut, but I needed it between the boys pulling on it, my first color last year, and all the dryness of summer and winter. I think we ended up taking 4 solid inches off, which feels like a lot! I love my long hair so it was kinda sad to see it go but it was really nasty and full of split ends so it needed to go… bye bye bye! It was a heavenly trip of both silence and adult talk… give me a glass of wine and it would’ve counted as a girls day out.

• Favorite recipe I made: I struggled with narrowing this down to just one, but alas I used my kids and husband as a tie-breaker and asked them. It was unanimous they are obsessed with these Brown butter Cinnamon Rolls with cream cheese frosting. I love browned butter anything, then top it with carbs and cinnamon and sugar… hello! These are pretty drool worthy and in my opinion a great start to your new year, which is why it was a must have for our New Year’s day. I’ll be posting the link to my recipe as soon as I add it to the blog 🙂

  

  

  
  

• Favorite outfit I wore: I have to say that this month, although it’s going to end on a high note of (gasp) 50 degrees today here in Michigan, has been brutal with feet upon feet of snow and bone-chilling negative temps with even colder wind chill, thank you Lake Michigan for all those gusts. So I have not been really in the mood to get super cute to shovel snow 3 times a day and pick up my daughter from preschool because we have mostly been locked within the confines of our house due to the nasty weather and sickness around us. There wasn’t an outfit that stood out to me except my pajama pants and thermal shirt, which I was completely prepared to write about, until I pulled out this shirt the other day and its softness melted into me and my kids couldn’t stop touching it… ugh maybe I shouldn’t wear this again only popped up a few times because of that though… haha only moms of kids like mine will get that, my kids are obsessed so the touching kinda never stop. I know I will miss it someday. I digress, this shirt says it all… Wife, Mom, Boss, yep you heard that right, but I’m pretty sure it should be written the other way for me – Boss, Mom, Wife, ‘cuz that’s kinda how it is in my house. Who doesn’t love these shirts, I’d love to know your favorites too! You can find them here.

• Favorite Show: I get so bummed out at the end of fall when the season finales begin and then I have to wait until January or sometimes February for the return, it’s cruel. I get it though, it’s busy, football is on and blah blah blah, I’m just glad we DVR everything because I can’t remember all the shows times and days anymore so I would miss the shows entirely if not for that baby. I had my calendar set for the return of Scandal though, it is the last season and I’m slightly bummed. Partially because I literally just got caught up binge watching it last Spring while my husband was on work trips so it feels like it can’t be the last season. Also, it feels like Olivia is fallen off big time so that’s depressing to end it on that note. The last 3 episodes have been pretty good so I’m hoping that Shonda Rhimes does this show justice and it ends well. Don’t worry I’ll let you know 🙂

By the way I think watching this show finally got my husband to have wine with me, I think these stemless wine glasses like these helped make him feel it was more masculine 😉

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• Favorite Kids item: I have so many favorite kids items lately, it seems like the boys have brought out a completely new side of me. Santa was so amazing this year to our kids and so the twins were given these Kindle Fire Tablets that they are incredibly obsessed with.  I have to hide them or they go ballistic and won’t do anything else. They are amazing though and I’m working on an entire post just about these so I’ll just leave the link here  to these now and the post will be here when I’m finished!

• Favorite Beauty item: I love all beauty products but this time of year I’m all about the moisturizer and skin renewal! I’m obsessed with this Rose Water Face toner and my daily defense moisturizer, both are a stable in my beauty regimen, You’ve got to check them out, here is a link to my two favorite items here:

         Rose Water

       Facial Moisturizer

• Favorite Date Night: Date Nights became crucial to our marriage last year and we have really tried to make sure that we find time to do them, even with all the craziness of having four kids, travel, holidays, work and budgeting. It became quite evident last year that the demands of career and kids along with a lot of personal struggles were hindering our marriage from evolving and growing. We were putting us on the back burner and it set our marriage on fire. Having multiple kids under a certain age is tough, especially when two are 2-year-old twin boys, a high energy 4-year-old, and my oldest who is hundreds of miles away from us. The strain became too much and the resentment too high even though we both were doing all we could for the family it didn’t feel synced. Luckily we live near family now so we enlisted the help from our parents so we could once a week or once a month step out of our house and just get some breath together and it blew our doors wide open and changed our world. So since this month we had so much going on and had honed in date nights the month before to have more family centered togetherness we were in need come mid-month, which was perfectly synced with my husband’s birthday so it worked perfectly. We spent last weekend both doing a family date night with our middle daughter and a solo midday brewery birthday date. We have a few amazing and local breweries that we were able to hop around to and had a blast doing so. If you’re ever in the southwestern Michigan area here are a few must try breweries:
  • Greenbush (Sawyer, MI)
  • Haymarket (Bridgeman, MI)
  • Watermark (Stevensville, MI)
  • Silver Harbor (Saint Joseph, MI)
  • North Pier (Benton Harbor, MI)
  • The Livery (Benton Harbor, MI)

• Favorite Drink: I’ve been a bit lame this month, usually I have some fun drinks around the new year and I experiment with some new cocktails but this month has been all about the Wine. Yep. Red Wine. Yep. Boxed Wine.Wait what? You heard it… RED BOXED WINE??!! Trust me, I was there with you but this one is different, and I’m a bit of a wine snob but I’m also a bit frugal too and with 4 kids we may go through a lot more wine than I want to share here… haha… but for real. Also, last month my husband for the first time drank wine with me… and now he’s hooked, so it’s kinda our evening thing now.

I’m all about this Bota Box, let me count the ways:

• It contains the amount of 4 bottles of wine in one box
• It has its own little cute wine spout
• It sits perfectly on your counter
• If your kids grab it, no glass will shatter
• The box is made from recycled cardboard and the entire thing is recyclable (at least I recycle it all)
• It’s inexpensive… four bottles for $16 (it was on sale, I believe it’s usually $25, still a good deal)
• It’s delicious, y’all seriously need to try it!

• Favorite Target find: Our Target is closing!! Cue the tears and anger. This Target was built when I was in middle school… so a couple of decades ago and now it’s closing which is devastating because we have NOTHING in this area, it felt promising that we had this gem still here. It’s 45 minute to the nearest Target now, going from living in Charlotte for most of my adult life to back here in nowhere MI it really felt deflating to hear this sad news. Alas I did make a purchase for Christmas online for my girls… two of the cutest little Owl pajama onesies. They are so warm and fuzzy and they just love them! Benton Harbor Target…you will be missed but we’ll always have .com.
• Favorite Activity: This month we didn’t do a lot of activities since it was super cold to go outside and the boys were sick for most of the month so not really feeling up to their self. I did manage to catch them helping me shovel the snow and play in it one afternoon when the winter snow gods gave us some relief and sun and it was only 36 degrees out!

We also managed to make it to our local Children’s museum last week for a few hours of play.

• Favorite Restaurant and favorite food: We are very loyal to our local restaurants and are so happy to have some amazing choices since our little town has come so very far in that category. We are patrons to one place in particular that has out heart, Silver Harbor Brewery. It’s a brewery, but the food sometimes even outweighs the beer and the atmosphere outweighs it all, so win, win, win. And they are family friendly so quadruple win! We often take our girls on a special date day there and they always enjoy it, this month was no exception!

Whew! January you have come and gone quite fast this year but you were full of so many favorites, even some not mentioned here. I hope these favorite resonated with some of you or gave you some new thoughts for the next months. Don’t forget to check out the other co-hosts and their favorite for this month and check back next month for the continuation of this series!

Jordan @ www.southernsweetandsassy.com

Nicole @ www.alamaxfield.blogspot.ca

Miranda @ www.mirandasouthern.com

Vanessa @ www.mysweetlifesong.com

Holly @ www.sunshineandholly.com

  Peeking in on a moment in time doesn’t tell the whole story, at least not for our mixed family. A Saturday afternoon turned into evening with my ex, his parents, our daughter and my other daughter from my new marriage and what the hell, let’s throw in a group of 7/8 year olds might look normal, unless of course you knew our backstory.

Where to begin this torrid story, well in the middle of course, that now is our norm (English major side note, I love how the shorten word for normal is now an acceptable term aka ‘the norm’). My ex and I were never married, yes I’ve already heard some hateful comments about premarital sex and babies out of wedlock, I’m down to my bones so happy that we never were married though (a tale for another day of course). We were not marriage material, we in turn broke up, knowing we were not compatible only to find we were pregnant with our sweet baby girl. Long story short, we tried to make it work for over 3 years but it was miserable and no way for a child to grow up seeing. Fast forward 5 years later and I’m married to the best man I could have dreamt up, mother to another girl and twin boys and now 600 miles away from my first born child ( post about this to come). 

  
Now standing in the home of my ex, a man I should loathe and his parents who I also should resent and I feel a creepy dejavu feeling come over me as I slave over a birthday cake that will be devoured without a thank you, a group of individuals who feel entitled to the things they are given, including my innocent child. I don’t feel hate but sadness, sadness for the life that thinks this is normal, the non-living that is happening before my lives and that’s when I feel the relief. A wave of relief crashes onto these thoughts as I realize that I escaped this “norm” a life of blah and that this moment in time is a reminder that I survived and escaped this life and there’s hope for my daughter that she too can escape this life if only I can show her there is more. After all, that is my job isn’t it? 

  My two year old busts into the kitchen at this moment, hollaring and laughing hysterically and I smile knowing she will never think this is normal, she will be the fire in the darkness and will guide her sister out of the dark and into the light. Sometimes the one you look up to learns something from you, I sure hope she does.

  
When I was younger long before I had kids of my own I thought I knew it all and already had solutions to all types of situations and child-rearing techniques. Being an experienced babysitter for many years surely taught me all I needed to know about parenting and all the do’s and dont’s. I imagined myself as a young, hip and adored mother who just had to give “the look” for everyone to shape up and silently behave. I can cringe thinking of myself as this know-it-all who thought my children will be nothing like the rude child I once was.

I remember as I held my oldest child how I swore that we’d be the best of friends, she would confined in me, tell me all her secrets, be concerned about my disappointment and want to strive to be better. After you become a mom your life shifts and you realize the weight of motherhood, the real truth is it’s hard, painful at times but every moment counts and every conversation can matter. The reality about being a fun mom is that your child doesn’t necessarily learn all the lessons you need them to unless you draw the line of what is right and wrong and how to behave as a human being.

I often find myself feeling guilty that my parenting is strict and less friendship-braclet bound as I thought it would be, then I remind myself that my job as a mother and parent is to be a teacher, instructor and guide in life and hopefully the wisdom and morals passed down from my parents will live through me to my own children. God willing that they become the people I’d want to be surrounded by in this world.

Well after 2 years of debating about it and blogging daily in my mind, (crazy I know but that’s my internal writer being honest) I finally decided to begin my third blog. My first two mostly to capture my pregnancies of my first two children and give out of town family a way to interact and follow our daily life. This one too will capture pregnancy (teeing) life with babies, toddlers and children as well as our blended family and all the chaos that goes with a big family.

Hey Everyone! I’m really excited about this blog and hope you will follow me through all the twists and turns of life as a mama, life with twin boys, our natural and organic lifestyle, fashion and everything inbetween. I had started a few personal blogs while pregnant with my kiddos to capture those moments but now want to focus on all my passions while being a stay at home mom to my four kids, including the new journey of being a twin mama. Can’t wait!