As a family of 8, there's a short list of things I can't live without. 

Topping that list is our double stack washer and dryer. Those suckers run 6-7 days a week and sometimes multiple times a day. Don't ask me why, with all the laundry we do, that we still find ourselves running frantically around the house five minutes before a game searching for the right jersey. And don't get my started on the missing sock mystery. 

When one of our beloved work horses stops working, we call somebody to fix it......quickly. 

The next day, a trusty A&E truck pulls in our driveway and Don gives me the grim news that one dryer is broken and the other one is on its last leg. To fix both would be almost as expensive as ordering new ones. 

I give the kids the bad news as I'm driving them to soccer and one of them pipes up and says, "that guy looked like he ate a lot of food". 

*Long pause while I collect my thoughts. Older daughter sighs heavily and remarks,...

My son stopped dead in his tracks in my bathroom doorway. 

I did that slow head turn wondering what absurdity might be hitting his little eye balls. 

“Um, mom, what are you doing?” 

I had to stop for a minute because I was now used to the little buzzing coming from my hand held face mister device. 

“Oh, this?!” I questioned as I pointed to my handy micro-infuser (If I’m being exact with my terminology).

”Yeah, what the heck is that thing?”

”It’s supposed to get the stuff I put on my face into the deepest layers of my skin so it feels and looks extra soft like yours.”

”Oh, okay. Well it looks and sounds really weird. Can I go play outside?”

Sometimes all it takes is your ten year old pointing out the obvious. Was this little NASA funded and backed device really going to make me look that much different? Probably not. Is the beauty industry a kissing cousin of the diet industry? Absolutely,...

I've always been slightly obsessed with flowers. 

For as long as I can remember, my dad could recognize a flower on any walk, hike or trip we took. I was amazed and intrigued by his ability to identify just about anything and was enthralled with every flower shape and color we came across. 

All the tables at our wedding were named after flowers. 

I love fresh flowers (PPL*) in the house thanks to Trader Joe's. 

I even took a few flower arranging classes and secretly fantasized about owning my own flower business. 

So when my mentor and teacher, Isabel Foxen Duke, mentioned a flower analogy, I leaned in. 

She said that her friend and fellow anti-diet activist, Virgie Tovar, likened (I'm paraphrasing here) various body sizes to all the different flowers in a field. There doesn't have to be only one, most beautiful flower. A field has many different types of flowers all requiring different amounts of sunlight, water and...

Ever since I can remember, I've been plagued with terrible motion sickness. Just like your favorite holiday movie title, I've been sick on Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Don't forget about boats. Forcing me to sit on a boat in the waves ranks high on my top nightmares list. 

Recently, my motion sickness has been EXTRA bad. Like run-out-of-my-barf-bags tucked-in-the-fetal-position-on-the-airplane-bad. As you can imagine, this isn't a very feasible scenario while trying to manage six kids. While I've dealt with this situation my whole life, I felt like I had crossed the line of "normal" and needed to find out what *might* be wrong with me. 

My doctor recommended a trip to an ENT. I also made an appointment with a neurologist. It felt good to be doing "something" towards solving this problem just having the appointments booked. 

I walked into the ENT with high hopes that she'd have the answer. ANY answer. 

After a quick conversation...