Happy St. Nicholas Day! Every year we leave our shoes by the door the night before his feast day, and we wake up the next morning to treats in our shoes.

It’s almost impossible not to get caught up in the busyness of the season. So, maybe instead of resisting, we should lean into all of it. Maybe we can embrace the fullness of Advent and soak it all in.

Thanksgiving is about spending time with people we love, but it’s also about the food. And you can’t have Thanksgiving dinner without pie.

Sauerkraut at Thanksgiving adds that extra something you didn’t even know you were missing.

There are Sunday school teachers who prepare days ahead of time. Then you have me, who often spends Sunday morning flipping through the curriculum for the day while feeding people breakfast.

It’s easy to be grateful when the sun is shining and everything is humming along beautifully, but it may be more important to be grateful when we hit a bump in the road.

This week I tagged along on a fourth-grade trip to the Maryland Historical Society.

Weekday mornings are a chaotic whirlwind of packing lunches and serving breakfast and making sure the right child has the right trumpet on the right day.

This fall has been a season of abundance. I have too many things to balance, too many competing priorities, too many problems to solve, and too many reasons not to go to sleep on time.

Even before we were married, John and I had talked about adoption. But talking about adoption is not the same as deciding to adopt. Coming to that decision can be difficult, and I feel so fortunate that John and I came to it together.