I’ve learned a lot of things about my kids in the short seven and a half years that I’ve been a parent.

Some days I think I’ve got it all figured out; but those are usually followed by days where everything I’ve thought to be true backfires on me.

Other days I stand in their darkened bedroom after they’re asleep, watching their chests rise and fall with each breath, and simply marvel at these little lives God has blessed me with.

Still on some days, I struggle simply to get everyone out of the door on time and then collapse into tears in the car line after shoving them out the door 30 seconds before school starts.

And yet in all those instances, over all those years and in every circumstance, there has only been one piece of parenting advice that I’ve found to be universal: Pay attention – it goes too quickly.

As of the moment I’m writing this, I’ve yet to find a way to freeze my children and stop them from growing. That said, we must not only enjoy every moment with them, but we must also put aside other worthy things for their sake…because what you deem as so important so that you can ‘give’ them more, actually robs them from all they truly want: YOU!

Your time, your presence and most of all, your love.

This Valentine’s Day, I want you to have fun with your kids. Go ahead, make cupcakes, cut out paper hearts and put stickers all over the windows if that’s your thing. But beyond the pink & purple, beyond the sugary sweet and beyond the chocolate filled fantasies are little hearts waiting to be held, molded, nurtured, disciplined and of course, tickled

“We love because He first loved us” ~ 1 John 4:19

Give your children the best gift of all: your presence. But if you are not first being filled with the love of our Heavenly Father, you certainly will not have anything left to overflow into your children. Run to Him daily to get your love tank filled so that the time you spend with your own precious bundles of love will resemble the time you have spent in the lap of King Jesus during your private moments with Him.

Just as your own children would suffer if they were never spoiled by your undivided attention, so will your own relationship with God if you don’t make a priority to steal time from your busy schedule to dedicate to Him.

So what are you waiting for? Get going! If your family is anything like ours, your kids also spell love “T-I-M-E”

Happy Valentine’s Day!
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With a passion for teaching and mentoring others as her inspiration, Sami Cone began blogging in 2009 to encourage others to live their dream life and pursue their passions. A published author and seminar speaker, she draws on her experiences as a writer, editor, university professor, performer, professional athlete, and pageant winner to help women realize their full potential in life. Sami appears regularly on TV & Radio as a Frugal Expert and has been blogging for Tommy Nelson since 2010. Sami and her husband of seven years, Rick, thrive in Nashville with their two children.

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With a passion for teaching and mentoring others as her inspiration, Sami Cone began blogging in 2009 to encourage others to live their dream life and pursue their passions. A published author and seminar speaker, she draws on her experiences as a writer, editor, university professor, performer, professional athlete, and pageant winner to help women realize their full potential in life. Sami appears regularly on TV & Radio as a Frugal Expert and has been blogging for Tommy Nelson since 2010. Sami and her husband of seven years, Rick, thrive in Nashville with their two children.

It’s finally December and Christmas is rapidly approaching! Our Tommy Mommies are going to be sharing some of their favorite memories, traditions and ways they celebrate the season with you throughout this month, but I also wanted to share another reality so many of us face during the holidays.

While this is a favorite time of year for many families, it can also be a time filled with stress and choices.

It should go without saying that we live in a fallen world, but for some reason, when it comes to Christmas, many families expect perfection.

Perfect family pictures. Perfect turkey dinners. Perfect behavior. Perfect decorations. And most of all, perfect time together.

Unfortunately, that is not reality.

Especially for those of us who come from broken, divorced or divided families, simply trying to figure out where to celebrate on Christmas Day can be a challenge.

For my husband and I (both of whose parents are divorced), this caused a great deal of anxiety the first few years of marriage, especially since we had a child right away who happened to be the first grandchild for both sides! All we wanted was to wake up Christmas morning in our own home with our own tree while opening presents and watching the Disney parade; instead we found ourselves pulled in a million directions, having to navigate where to go, when, and for how long. The last year we played this game we voyaged to six houses in one day with two toddlers who never got naps.

Less than ideal, to say the least.

Even worse was that I didn’t feel like our efforts were being appreciated! Many of the extended family we visited insinuated that we didn’t stay long enough, eat enough, interact enough, etc. Seriously? How many buffets can you tackle in one day without a nap and still be expected to act perky?

Once we realized that the stress we thought we were internalizing was actually being transferred to our small children, we said enough is enough. What kind of model were we being our kids? Even more, how was this modeling the love of Jesus and gratefulness of the season for them?

That was when we stood firm and made Christmas morning sacred in our family. We get up, (get daddy his coffee), look in stockings, turn on the parade and put our hashbrown casserole in the oven for breakfast. We take our time and soak in the day.

What we’ve now done is extended the invitation for others to join us in our home Christmas morning. It’s not that we don’t want to see family, but we do want to establish our own traditions as the Cone family.

Now that we live away from most of our family, we’ve also learned the importance of chosen family: those friends that become like family to you. We are SO grateful for friends (and their families) who have invited us into their homes on holidays… or better yet, alternate days we choose to celebrate the holidays together!

We also have to remember the ultimate choice of Christmas – the choice that God made to send His son Jesus to earth as a human baby to live and eventually die for our sins.

So whether you’re choosing where to spend your holiday, what family to spend it with, who to invite to be a part of your family or how to celebrate Jesus in this of Advent, remember, it is a conscious choice you have to make.

However that looks and whatever that means for you and your kids, I encourage you to choose family this Christmas.

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With a passion for teaching and mentoring others as her inspiration, Sami Cone began blogging in 2009 to encourage others to live their dream life and pursue their passions. A published author and seminar speaker, she draws on her experiences as a writer, editor, university professor, performer, professional athlete, and pageant winner to help women realize their full potential in life. Sami appears regularly on TV & Radio as a Frugal Expert and has been blogging for Tommy Nelson since 2010. Sami and her husband of seven years, Rick, thrive in Nashville with their two children.

As I write this, the air is crisp & the leaves around me are colorful. By far, this is my favorite time of year to share with my family!

This month, all our Tommy Nelson Mommies will be sharing what they love about this season and how they encourage their children to express gratitude to those around them on a regular basis.

Being from Chicago, I’ve always loved watching the seasons change. However, I did spend a large portion of my adult life living in the South: Mexico, the Bahamas, Georgia & Florida. The latter is where I got married & gave birth to both of my children, but I never considered Florida home. In fact, I was the only person I knew that got excited when it was gray & rainy because I could look out my window and at least pretend it was cold outside!

I’m afraid I may have passed my propensity for cool weather on to my children. In fact, when it came time for us to sell our house in Florida to move to Nashville, my (then) 3 year old daughter said, “Mom, no one will buy our house!”

I looked at her quizzically. We had just spent months fixing up our home to make it look even better than when we had lived there! When I asked her why, she simply responded with, “Don’t they know how hot it is here?!?!”

Three Falls later, our entire family is now comfortably settled in Nashville and enjoying every pumpkin patch, hooded sweater and leaf pile we come across.

For whatever reason, it also seems that as the temperatures drop, the idea of volunteering comes up. Perhaps it’s because the Fall signifies the start of the holidays and cold weather, two reasons that make it even more unbearable for many of us to imagine others alone and without basic needs being met.

I’m the first to recognize that although there are always things I want to improve on, I have great kids. But they simply didn’t grow up in the time of our parents. I mean really – my dad was born during the Great Depression & fought in World War II – I don’t stand a chance of teaching my kids the kind of gratitude and appreciation that came naturally from growing up in that era. So without guilting them daily with the fact that they better clean their dinner plate because there are starving kids in Africa, we thought we’d try something a little closer to home.

So we volunteered as a family at a local soup kitchen.

Even though our kids weren’t actually chopping or cooking the food, they still got to help and more importantly, they got to meet the people being directly affected by the organization. Our kids played in the next room while we prepped in the kitchen, then they came and ate with us as a group and joined in the clean up. (You can read more about our kids volunteer experience here).

If you’re looking for volunteer opportunities for your kids, try some of these ideas:
*Ask at your local church or community center for family friendly volunteer opportunities already in place
*Consider sponsoring a child as a family through organizations like Compassion International or World Vision
*Call your local children’s hospital and see if you and your child can come play/read/sit with some of the kids with long term illnesses.
*Visit a local nursing home with your kids to just talk, sing Christmas Carols, play cards, deliver pictures, etc

Regardless of what you decide to do, have a dialogue (notice I say ‘dialogue’ and not ‘speech’) with your kids about why it’s important to give of our time and gifts (both intrinsic gifts & financial gifts), discover what they’re passionate about and build a volunteer experience from there. If they love animals, look a visiting a local shelter and walking the animals. If they love art, call your local museum and find out if they can help with cleaning up the kids’ areas there. If they love kids, maybe they can volunteer at your church nursery.

Most importantly, start at home. Just like it’s hard to expect your kids to keep their rooms clean when your own is a mess, kids will not understand how to demonstrate gratitude if they don’t first experience it.

Do you regularly pray before your meal and show gratitude for what’s in front of you, even if it’s not your favorite? Do you thank your spouse for helping around the house, even if you expect him to do it? Do you express gratitude for the mundane, like a beautiful day or getting to school on time? If not, start with these small expressions of gratitude in your own home and you’ll soon see them foster into larger demonstrations in their greater circle of influence!

Now it’s your turn: What’s your favorite way to foster gratitude in your own children? Are there any unique opportunities to do so in the Fall?

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With a passion for teaching and mentoring others as her inspiration, Sami Cone began blogging in 2009 to encourage others to live their dream life and pursue their passions. A published author and seminar speaker, she draws on her experiences as a writer, editor, university professor, performer, professional athlete, and pageant winner to help women realize their full potential in life. Sami appears regularly on TV & Radio as a Frugal Expert and has been blogging for Tommy Nelson since 2010. Sami and her husband of seven years, Rick, thrive in Nashville with their two children.

This month, our Tommy Mommies are sharing about how we’ve learned that our different children each have different needs. While we may have once been under the illusion that we could parent all our children the same way, we quickly realized that just as each of our children are unique, they each need different things from us as their parents.

This became very evident to us very early on in our parenting. When my daughter was barely able to speak, I noticed a pattern of (what I thought was) defiant behavior emerging.

If I asked her to do something, she would, on a fairly consistent basis, repeat back or do the exact opposite of what I’d said. Being our first-born, she had always been a good baby and fairly compliant toddler. As we reached the two’s, I simply thought this was the milestone tons of parents before me had dreaded…but I never wanted to ‘dread’ anything when it came to my child.

In fact, I had mentors confirm that while every stage of parenting comes with its own unique set of challenges, it is possible to traverse those without losing your mind and while growing closer as a family.

So this situation left me dumbfounded.

It wasn’t until I was giving Kariss a bath one night and I asked her to do something, to which she again responded with the opposite.

My eyes alone must have conveyed my immense disdain (I don’t want to admit it was frustration), because her little face looked genuinely crestfallen and confused. This was not the face of a child willfully disobeying her mother.

It stopped me in my tracks.

“Kariss,” I gently asked her, “what did you just hear mommy say?”

Without skipping a beat, she repeated back the opposite version of what I’d just asked her to do.

Still looking scared and confused at why she was getting in trouble for following my directions, I proceeded to ask her about an incident from the night before. She again shared what she internalized…which was a completely different version of what had come out of my mouth.

I then recalled a similar instance a friend (& licensed counselor) told me about her own son. Over a period of time while she home-schooled him, he consistently ignored her. Long story short, it turned out he had a central auditory processing disorder, a condition where he only hears about 7 out of every 10 words in a sentence, and than number drops significantly if there are any distractions in the room.

That bathtub incident forever changed the way we communicated with our daughter. It taught us to re-evaluate what we previously thought we knew about our little girl. We learned that she ‘hears’ just as much (if not more) with her eyes as she does with her ears.

Now when we talk to her, especially when giving commands or administering discipline, we get down on her level, take everything out of her hands, remove all noise distractions (within reason) and look her directly in the eyes as we speak. We’ve also learned to respond instead of react (helpful advice for marriages too!). If our eyes are too angry or our voices too loud, she emotionally shuts down and wouldn’t hear a thing we’d say anyway! We’ve even been able to communicate this to her teachers, which has in turn helped them better understand how she learns.

Although her brother is only 19 months her junior, communication is not that complicated with him. However, while our daughter sees the world as black & white, our son enjoys every shade of gray in between! Making sure he hears us isn’t our issue, but making sure he doesn’t decide to leave our commands up to his own interpretation is an entirely different issue…can you say “Ma-nip-u-late”???

It’s taught us that there is not one cookie-cutter way to parent our children. God made them unique and therefore there are unique ways that we will talk, play, instruct, discipline and reward them.

I mentioned earlier that I shared our discoveries about our daughter’s teacher. I would encourage you to do the same. Every year, I write a note to our children’s teachers, both thanking them in advance for the investment they’re making into our kids and sharing a list about what makes them unique. If nothing else, it’s a fun memory for me to keep each year (I make a copy for myself). However, every teacher has made it a point to tell me first-hand how much they’ve appreciated the jump start I’ve given them in learning about our kids – everything from special nick names to how they like to spend their time away from school.

How are your kids unique? What special ways to you celebrate that?

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With a passion for teaching and mentoring others as her inspiration, Sami Cone began blogging in 2009 to encourage others to live their dream life and pursue their passions. A published author and seminar speaker, she draws on her experiences as a writer, editor, university professor, performer, professional athlete, and pageant winner to help women realize their full potential in life. Sami appears regularly on TV & Radio as a Frugal Expert and has been blogging for Tommy Nelson since 2010. Sami and her husband of seven years, Rick, thrive in Nashville with their two children.