Today, I am hitting the road with my old friend Lisa Thompson (simplifiedsaving.com & nickelsndimes.com). Wait, that came out wrong. Lisa isn’t old.  But she is my friend.  And has been for a while. We spent five weeks together in Ukraine.  That will either make you friends for life or it will…well…it made us friends for life!  And that trip taught both of us about blogging for the first time. Tomorrow is the inaugural Killer Tribes Conference, and my heart is filled with joy at all the amazing online blogger friends I will finally get to meet in person. Bryan Allain has an […]

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You may or may not know this, but I can be pretty handy with a set of tools.  Not every DIY project has turned to gold, though, and today I get to tell the world about one or two of them. And you, you lucky dog, you have the opportunity to support me in my podcast debut as a DIY Disasters guest on Down and Dirty with Frank Fontana! Blogging mentor and Chief Killer Tribesman Brian Allain was a guest on Frank’s show about a month ago, and last week he led Frank’s team to my doorstep as if my blog was a […]

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Welcome to a special Tuesday edition at River of Thoughts!   I recently had the honor of reading an advance copy of Shawn Smucker’s new book Building a Life Out of Words. Shawn’s dream, like mine, is writing.  In 2009, Shawn went all-in to follow that dream, and now he’s sharing his story of the difficult by rewarding transition to full-time writer. Shawn’s story applies to anyone looking to make more out of their life. So often, we believe that to follow our bliss, to chase our dream of creating art or opening a dress shop or breeding hedgehogs, we must quit […]

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    I’m shaking up the schedule this week…Stay tuned for a special Tuesday edition of River of Thoughts! …and pass the ice cream, please?   Photo credit:  Jamieanne (Creative Commons)

Last night, our church’s adoption ministry launched a new support group for adoptive parents. We’ve been thinking about this and praying over it for quite a while, and we finally decided that we would just get a room at the church and start meeting and whoever showed up, great.  We were ready for 5 or 50. We got four. Including two leaders. But as we sat together and shared experiences and talked about challenges and things that were hard and things that were joyful, I realized that God brought the people into that room that needed to be in that […]

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