Okay friends, between Vegas and wine tastings, my last few posts have been fairly fun. I am afraid I have to bring us down a little this month, but I promise I am only sharing to help spare another family from heartbreak. If you aren’t one for sad stories, then I suggest you skip this post altogether or skip down to the pet health and safety tips.  Also, please note that I am not a veterinarian or animal medical professional. I am simply sharing what we learned in an effort to spare you some mistakes.

Back in 2017 before we moved to Kansas, we had our house on the market down in Texas. We had to do this crazy routine everytime we had a showing. We would load up the whole family, which at this time included 3 dogs, and go hang out in a park somewhere. We had a pretty solid offer on our house, but our real estate agent said it would still be a good idea to continue accepting showings. We had a request for an early morning showing on a Saturday, so we decided to visit Palmetto State Park. It was only an hour or so away and we had been there before, so it seemed perfect.

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I was just chatting with another mom the other night about how there is a point in time where you simply miss out on movies. Your kids are a certain age or your life is in a certain stage where having the time to grab dinner and movie is all of a sudden complicated. You have to arrange child care and practically double your date night budget because of it. On the off chance that you do get to go to a movie, it absolutely sucks when the movie turns out to be bad.

On the other hand, with so many streaming services available I sometimes get overwhelmed at the options and end up watching the same movies over and over. It’s also always been a struggle to find a good family movie to watch all together. Luckily, Disney+ has all but solved that issue.

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Do you ever have so much in your head that you’re not even sure in what order things will come out? Well that is me today, so bear with me!

A couple days ago Instagram reminded me about a blog post I wrote exactly one year ago called, “Why Homeschool?” In that blog post I wrote about why we decided to homeschool our oldest, our first homeschool convention experience, and explained how we use Monarch online curriculum. Since then, we’ve decided to homeschool our youngest and I have attended another Teaching Parents Association (TPA) Convention.

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Photo Credit: Sean Hayse

Have you ever done the “rose and thorn” activity? It is sometimes called “peak and pit” or “high and low.” It’s one of my favorites to do around the dining room table. The activity goes like this: each person gets a turn sharing the best part of their day and the worst part of their day. My favorite thing to happen during this activity is the realization that you didn’t have a “worst part” of your day. This is also a good activity to do after milestone events like at New Year’s, the end of the school year, or the end of a vacation. Today, I am going to share the best and worst moments with my former clients and employees. I learned many things along my entrepreneurial journey and I am finally ready to share more about what transpired behind the scenes. Let me be clear, my hope today is not to rile anyone up, but rather to encourage other entrepreneurs who may be experiencing “thorns” at this time.

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I want to share with you some about my journey as an entrepreneur, which can best be categorized into three major stages:

My first stage of entrepreneurship can only be described as an intensely focused drive. It was a balancing act that ultimately resulted in growth for our business. I was able to enlist support both in work and at home. In the moment, all I could see was the business success and I saw the fact that our family was holding it all together as a success as well. Looking back now, I can’t help but wonder what I missed out on during the time I was burning the candle at both ends…

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Taken at Field Station: Dinosaurs in Derby, KS.

I am mama to two boys who have each gone through extensive dinosaur phases. It’s safe to say I have seen the Jurassic Park movies roughly 65 million times… each. There are a handful of lessons I derived from the movies that have become part of our daily jargon. I am finally ready to share those lessons with you so, read on if you dare!

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