Today is Lily’s eighth birthday. I asked her what she’d like to do for her actual birthday (she had her party last Friday) and she said, “Go to the beach.” So this afternoon we swimsuited up and headed for our town’s little beach on the St. Croix River.
As I sat at the water’s edge watching [...]

{ Lily in our hotel room in Nanchang }
The other day I clicked on Design Mom for my daily fix and there I was! Gabrielle has a new feature called “Design Mom Asks.” She selects four or five bloggers and asks them to answer a question like “What’s the most wonderful gift you’ve ever received?” The [...]

Years ago, a friend who works in the health realization branch of psychology shared a concept that seriously changed how I look at life.
It’s called “mud-mind” and here’s how it works. Think of a time recently when you felt great. Maybe you were happily immersed in work, or out for a run, or surrounded by [...]

{ You can climb a tree in a dress, but it’s probably harder. }
Lily has always preferred to wear dresses. I’ve been quite proud of this. As someone whose go-to outfit is a pair of jeans and a Favorite T from the Gap, I’ve happily basked in her reflected glory. When other mothers tell me [...]

Before you read any further, please go check out this post: Waking Up Awesome. It’ll only take a minute. I’ll wait right here.
Welcome back. What did you think? Are you loving the little girl in the photo? Do you remember ever feeling like that yourself?
Can we try something here? Dig through your old photos and [...]

We’ve just returned from a wonderful weekend spent with our “Forever Families.” These people are dear to our hearts because we shared the adventure of traveling to China together in 2005 to bring our daughters home. Plus, they’re some of the best people we know. We’ve been getting together every year since to share stories, [...]

A friend of mine who is a new mother asked me to share some family traditions. What a great idea! I decided to go back to our very first tradition: baby quilts. I’m writing about Lily’s quilt because I think it would be special for any baby, whether he or she’s adopted or not. So [...]

Happy New Year! Welcome to the Chinese Year of the Rabbit.
Just before we adopted Lily our social worker pointed out that we would now be a Chinese-American family. I hadn’t thought of it that way before, but of course she was absolutely right. Among the many wonderful blessings this brings is the fact that we get [...]