Big family celebrations have a way of growing quickly. A milestone birthday, anniversary, graduation, engagement party, or a long-standing tradition like a big Thanksgiving gathering can bring together several generations, relatives from different households, and...
There's a specific kind of dread that comes with a stack of unopened mail. You know which envelopes they are without even looking — the too-thin ones from the bank, the ones with a window instead of a stamp. Most people don't ignore these because they don't understand...
If someone had asked me a few years ago what the biggest challenge of midlife would be, I probably would have guessed something involving career pivots, empty nesting, or figuring out what the next chapter actually looks like. Aging parents wouldn't have crossed my...
We've all experienced it. That feeling of dread in the pit of your stomach when things go horribly wrong right before you leave for a trip. You're in the middle of packing, your fridge is empty, the dog knows it's already acting suspicious that car rides will ensue,...
We adopted our Great Dane, Claire Danes (formerly known as Shorty), in September 2021 from the Humane Society in Fishers, Indiana. To be clear: We were not looking to adopt a dog. The loss of our Newfoundland, Ayla, a few years earlier was still raw, tender, and very...
We can hardly believe it but we have been Midwesterners for more than a year now – and it may come as a surprise but we absolutely love it here. We have experienced large cities, suburbs, rural towns, and many things in between that Indiana has to offer and...
When I was at the grocery store last week, I picked up some ground beef to make spaghetti sauce. I have been using a Southern-style meat sauce recipe for over a year now that I picked up on allrecipes.com. I started out just following the recipe but now I’ve totally...
The last few days have been very sad for us as we said goodbye to our sweet, almost 18-year-old, Siamese-Mix kitty, Marilyn. We thought we'd create a little tribute post to remember the fun times we had with her and share some of our favorite pictures and memories....
We live in a 1,600 sq. ft. condo in SW Florida. It's plenty of room for just the three of us but we would like to have more places to store the stuff we have. Our current plans for the next decade or two will hopefully include a whole lot more travel, especially after...
This is a continuation of Part 1 - 10 Lessons Learned While Preparing for Hurricane Irma As I mentioned in Part 1 of this series, we were prepping like we were going to stay in Naples - but with the Hurricane models shifting further to the West every hour and putting...
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