dripping with passion

    here's ten thoughts that i didn't quite  get around to writing out and publishing yesterday. and a crazy amount of pictures of magnolia trees around london, because i just can't get enough. a couple of days ago on a walk home, moses shouted, "mommy! there's a magnolia tree! you love  magnolia trees!" :) one. thanks for the comments back on this post when i asked for thoughts about sharing details about my children online. i really appreciated the different perspectives shared, and i think it's a really interesting discussion. ian and i will continually be carefully considering what is best for our family, all things considered. the internet has changed so much about human life ... it's crazy.   moses loves going to the grocery store, riding in the cart, and then playing in the little green recycling truck toy they have there. this week gabriel came inside the truck for the first time, while mo ate a snack of his absolute favourite food - m...

Hey, it's Ian. I’ve never written on here before, and I have no clue about any of the rules of blogging or writing - I’m a numbers guy. But Charity mentioned one of the questions she gets asked most is how we finance our vacations with points and get sweet deals. When it comes to trip planning, that's my domain. So I'm writing a guest post. To cut to the chase, the primary answer to how we get points and deals for travel is: credit cards. Sure, on a lot of credit cards you get one “point” (for example: airline mile, hotel point, transferable "ultimate rewards" point, etc) for every dollar you spend with the credit card. And in some categories for some cards (like gas, restaurants, etc) you get 2, 3 or even 10 times points for every dollar you spend. But the real mass of our point collection has come from credit card sign up bonuses . With most credit cards, there is a large number of points awarded when you meet a minimum spending requirement with...

today i wanted to share ten thoughts i have on parenting. this is not me giving advice ... i am just starting on the journey of parenthood, and i am noooo expert! but this is me sharing advice - tidbits that i have learned from others or from my (still very limited!) experience. parenting is such a trip, and i really believe that we need to help each other, especially in this super-connected world we live in. so, for what it's worth, here's some thoughts i've had lately on parenting.  (obviously this applies mostly to toddlers since that's the chapter our family is in right now!) (several of the tidbits below are ideas i learned from ralphie jacobs , whose instagram story highlights i have poured over. i love her approach and am so grateful to her for summarizing and teaching all the things she has studied.) one. our kids want us . kids want their parents' attention, more than pretty much anything. they crave us to watch them, talk to them, n...