Best of Family – 2013

When I look back over 2013, I am surprised by the sheer quantity of posts.  Seems like my husband is right.  I do have a lot of words!

It’s always fun for me to look back through the posts I wrote, especially the ones about my family.  That’s what I absolutely love about blogging – I’m recording memories, not only for me, but also for my family and I think that’s super-cool.

If it’s fun for me to look back over a year now, what will it be like ten or twenty years from now?

500 Miles with A Kid and A Kazoo – This just proves that your sins (or your parenting trickiness) will find you out.

Redneck Heat – I don’t like it, and if I could, I would take myself out of the equation and say, I am the only non-redneck one in the family, but alas my son, the budding photographer, caught images of me aiding and abetting the king Redneck himself.

Mommy Super-Powers – I’m a mother with a mommy super power, and I’m pretty sure I am not alone in all this super power goodness.

Comparison Hurts – There’s a verse in the Bible that tells us to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice.  Some of us do a lot of weeping, but when it comes to rejoicing, our good sense gets taken over by the green-eyed monster called jealousy.

Something happened this year that I never, ever anticipated.  One of my posts exploded on the internet.

Now, I know for some big bloggers this is normal, but for little ole me, it’s so far from normal that I’m still kinda in shock.

In fact, it wasn’t a popular post (actually a very mini-series) with my regular readers.  For a little while, I was pretty much convinced I never should have written this series.  I feared it came across as me tell moms what they should be doing and I never, ever meant for that to happen.

Friends, I screw-up as a mom all the time, all the time.  Just ask my kids!  I wrote this to share a few simple things I did that worked for me.  I hoped that maybe they would work for someone else too.

The post, How I Taught My Kids to Sit Still in Church has had over 270,000 views since I wrote it in April…just that ONE post!  That’s crazy my friends.  I had no clue there were so many squirmy kids in churches all over the country.

Today I got an email asking if this post could be translated into Spanish.

I’ve gotta laugh, because I didn’t even particularly like this series.  I told myself I’d never write another one like it again.  Obviously I’m reconsidering.

No Fuss Parenting

How I Taught My Kids to Sit Still in Church

5 Reasons I Put my Kids to Bed Early

Discipline

These posts were mostly shared on Facebook, over and over again.  I just wanted to thank every person who pinned, tweeted, and shared these posts on Facebook.  It’s because of you that my stats went wild this year.  Thank you.