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A Love Letter to Teachers from Parents Everywhere

By Amy Betters-Midtvedt / January 8, 2016

To the Awesome Educators, here are all the ways you are loved: We love you for making our children feel important in the world outside of our home. We see you taking an interest in their lives, remembering they are in karate or in a play and you ask them about it or even show up…

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The Internet Isn’t the Boss of my Christmas

By Amy Betters-Midtvedt / December 19, 2015

For someone who has taken away her family’s electronic devices  for weeks at a time, I spend a lot of time online. I have spent my fair share of time scrolling through Facebook, seeing what my peeps are up this holiday season (your highlight reels rock my world) or getting sucked into the vortex of…

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Finding our joy (hint: it’s right under our noses)

By Amy Betters-Midtvedt / December 2, 2015

It’s 6:15, kids are still at the the dinner table, and we have a 20 minute drive to get to the baseball game by 6:30. I’m no math whiz, but I am pretty sure this is going to be impossible. Cue the yelling. “Get your stuff! For the 100th time! Get in the car!” Cue…

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Favorite thing #2…Stick it to Starbucks (and another giveaway)!

By Amy Betters-Midtvedt / November 24, 2015

OH MY! This favorite thing was created by my sister and husband who wanted to take the “red cup craziness” and make it into something fun. I think they totally succeeded!  Our first stop on Black Friday shopping morning is Starbucks and I can’t wait to stick one of these bad boys to my red…

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Amy and Erin’s Favorite Things…Noonday!

By Amy Betters-Midtvedt / November 13, 2015

We may not be Oprah but as we start thinking about shopping for the holidays, we wanted to share some of our favorite things (ask Erin about her Oprah experience sometime!) through a fun segment aptly named “Amy and Erin’s Favorite things”…we are so original. First up, NOONDAY. Noonday is a wonderful company that employs…

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What Happened When We Made Our Home an Electronics Free Zone.

By Amy Betters-Midtvedt / November 5, 2015

iPods, iPhones, iPads, computers, cell phones, tablets, all those things that my children lovingly refer to as “Electronics” can be both a blessing and a curse. For our family the curse began to outweigh the blessing earlier this year. I’m not sure what happened to cause us to suddenly lose it, all I know is that one day…

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How to get organized for school the night before (in 1001 easy steps)

By Amy Betters-Midtvedt / October 22, 2015

Mornings often seem like they are trying to kill me. Buses in our world come at 3 different times for 5 different kids, the first one arriving on the scene at 6:45 am. There are teen girls in the first round which involves a lot of bathroom time (thank the good Lord above for the…

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I Already Miss You

By Amy Betters-Midtvedt / October 8, 2015

5 kids in this house and chaos reigns. Most often we are trying to figure out how to squeeze everyone in, get everyone to sit down, get everyone where they need to be, get everyone to BE QUIET for just 30 seconds. You would think that when we are down a kid we would feel…

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The sit…you’ve earned it now go claim it

By Amy Betters-Midtvedt / September 23, 2015

These days, living with 5 kids is sort of like living in a frat house, or what I would imagine living in a frat house to be, based on my time in college visiting quite a few of them. It’s loud, there is a lot of yelling and mayhem and mess and everyone is always…

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What Your Kids Really Think of You {Life through Sam Colored Glasses}

By Amy Betters-Midtvedt / September 16, 2015

“Mom! Look! It’s the most persect car ever!” (Not a typo, Sam pronounces “perfect” as “persect”. While we are on the topic does anyone else feel like crying when their babies start to pronounce words RIGHT? I still haven’t gotten over Ellie switching from “jum” to “gum” and she’s 14. I love little kid speak…

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