Thriving In Motherhood Podcast | Productivity, Planning, Family Systems, Time Management, Survival Mode, Mental Health, Vision

Our family has been using audiobooks for years and they have become an integral part of our routines. Today, I'm sharing why we love listening to audiobooks in our home, how we listen, how to develop the skill of listening to audiobooks, and our favorite audiobooks to listen to by age.    Why Audiobooks? Audiobooks have been our trusty companions for years, adding a touch of magic to our quiet tim...

This is my seventh year creating a vision for my year. It is always a new experience, and I'm amazed at what comes out of this exercise. In today's episode, I'm sharing what I've learned in 2023 and what I'm focusing on, changing, and working toward in 2024. Here are a few areas from my 2024 vision:  Investing More Into What's Working: Road trips Family adventures (beach, historical sites, new exp...

When it comes to goal setting, moms need different strategies in different seasons of motherhood. In this week's video, I'll be sharing what works in setting goals for the pregnancy and baby phase, when you have children under six, when you have school-aged kids and a full schedule, and when your children leave home. There are also principles that apply to all of us, no matter what stage we are in...

At the start of this new year, I realized I needed to make some changes to how I'm using my phone. In this week's episode, I'm outlining the problems I was having with technology and how it impacted my daily life, the parameters I've set for myself with my phone, and how I've set myself up for success. 5 Reasons to Reduce Phone Usage: Often, when things are out of balance, or we're not in our usua...

One of the skills in the structure pillar of the Three Pillars of Thriving is automation - making a decision once and having it happen over and over again. We can apply this principle to our weekly schedule. When we sit down and create a template of when we do things every day throughout the week, we can refer back to it with many decisions already made.  Every quarter, I like to sketch out our cu...

In this week's episode, I'm sharing the #1 thing moms need to do for 2024 - and I can't think of any exceptions. In my 10.5 years of motherhood, this is the thing that has helped me in EVERY season, from hard pregnancies where days creep by to full schedules with lots going on in life and business. Every mom needs to create a vision for the year.  There are an almost endless number of paths each d...

I have spent a lot of time inside with young kids who have loads of energy (even though we get out as much as we can). We've been in tiny grad student apartments and smaller houses without clear places to physically move their bodies for all 10.5 years of motherhood. As we get into winter, I start to feel a sense of panic about what we will do for months with shorter daylight hours, colder tempera...

If you had told me ten years ago that I could be a full-time stay-at-home mom, living 30 hours away from our family, homeschooling my four children, and running a business in small pockets of time, I wouldn't have believed you.  In those early years, the days ran together in one big blur, our cinder block student housing had stuff strewn around the floor, and I felt horribly guilty if I put my bab...

How do you feel about chore charts? I like the idea of them, and I don't mind creating them, but when it comes to having a marker or stickers handy to actually fill them out, we drop the ball pretty much every time.  This week, I'm sharing a new discovery I made that is simplifying our family cleaning routine: chore boards. This completely self-contained system allows me to clearly communicate eac...

Every month, I write down the books I read or listened to. Today, I'm sharing my 12 favorites that I read this year from a wide variety of topics and subjects.  Reading lots of books has allowed me to actively learn while being a stay-at-home mom. When designing a planner for my needs, keeping track of the books I read or listened to each month was an essential piece.  Why? Two reasons: it helped...

In this week's video, I'll take you on a virtual tour of our homeschooling setup for this year. As a homeschooling mom of Kindergarten, 2nd grade, and 4th grade kids, I've tested a variety of resources and materials over the years.  So, if you're a fellow homeschooling parent looking for inspiration, you're in the right place! We've made a few tweaks to how we are doing school this year. Now that...

Have you ever felt like it's too late to be the mom you hope to be and you'll be a good grandma instead? In this week's video, Stephanie Stutznegger shares how she has radically changed her life in the last year as she got clear with her vision, took lots of baby steps, and celebrated each month in the Thriving in Motherhood Planner and Soaring Mothers Society . Stephanie lives in Northern Califor...

Do you struggle with manners in your family? Do you wonder if they are outdated and even worth teaching? In this week's episode, Brooke Romney shares her simple system to effectively make manners part of our everyday lives with kids.  Brooke Romney is a writer, speaker and leader of an online community who helps moms of teens and tweens to create meaningful, healthy, and enjoyable relationships wi...

This week on the podcast, I'm answering a fabulous question about how to use nap time well. Maybe you can relate to hitting the quiet moment of the day and feeling exhausted and wanting to take a nap yourself, but also wanting to be consistent in what you want to do. It can be hard to figure out what to do when it feels like everything needs to be done while also lacking motivation because you are...

This week's question is about how we do Poetry Tea Time in our family. This is an idea I got several years ago from Julie Bogert @bravelearnerhome, and we've incorporated it into our weekly rhythm.  In this week's episode, I'll share how we set it up to make it easy to do at our house, when we hold our tea time, the books we use, and our favorite snacks that everyone looks forward to. The What, Ho...

In this week's episode, I'm answering a question from a mom in our Thriving in Motherhood Community about possible routines (besides sitting in bed together, playing with toys, and watching movies) that you can have with severe morning sickness during pregnancy when you have other little kids at home.   I've had four really challenging pregnancies, the last three with kids at home, and in this epi...

It's here!! The 2024 Thriving in Motherhood Planner is ready to make its way into your hands to empower you in creating a life that you are excited to wake up to each day.  In this week's episode, I'm sharing the story of the planner, the overview of how the whole system works, and all of the changes and updates that have been made for next year's planner. I am very excited about the details we've...

Do you get to the end of your day completely exhausted but weren't able to do the things you wanted or wrote out in your time block? I got this very relatable question from a mother in our Thriving in Motherhood Community: "I put in time blocks and write my routines, and it helps to schedule around meal times, but by the end of the day, I fill in what I did instead of actually doing what I wanted...

I got an excellent question from a mother in our Thriving in Motherhood community, Kate, about how to find activities you can enjoy with all your children. In this week's episode, I'll address how to manage the different personalities of your children and their own interests, as well as the resistance that comes when you try to get everyone to agree on what to do together.

In this week's episode, I'm answering a question from a member of our own Thriving in Motherhood community about how to handle negative attitudes with her child when it comes to certain things about homeschooling. I'm no stranger to negative attitudes in our home (from myself and the kids), but we are very intentional with addressing those attitudes.  Here are seven questions we ask when one of ou...

A few weeks ago, I did an episode about my morning routine. I got a great follow-up question about how to do this when you have a baby or toddler that wakes up super early. I remember that season well.  A friend and I would meet up at 7:45 a.m. with our two toddlers and baby, each of whom woke up too early and went for a run and talked about how our kids wake up too early! But I've learned a lot f...

For the first time in 10 years, I recently traveled across the country and left all my kids and my husband for six days. It wasn't as impossible as I had made it out to be in my mind. In fact, everything went great! In this week's episode, I'm sharing practical things I did to prepare everyone for a smooth week at home. Next time my husband travels, I'll be using some of these tips to make things...

As we transition from summer to fall, I like to pause and reflect on how the last few months went as a way to close the tabs and move forward with confidence into the next season.  It can be easy to get to the end of the season and wish it went differently. But instead of sitting in a place of discouragement or looking at the things that didn't go well, we can pause and look for the lessons learne...

After a summer of different activities and routines (or maybe no routines), I get excited about settling into a new rhythm as we transition into the school year and fall.  In this week's episode, I'm sharing the process I've used for years to help our family get clarity about what matters to us right now and how to make sure we make time for it in our daily life. I'm really great at thinking of th...

For years I've gotten up before the kids (or with the kids and let them play near me) while I do my morning routine to get myself in a good place. This is one of the ways I keep my Soul Pillar intact. When I don't do my morning routine, I find that it doesn't take too long before I'm irritable, grumpy, and snappy at everyone around me. Now that I'm aware of that, this morning routine is one of the...