Shelly Snow Pordea

* Recently, I have been in conversations or seen Facebook posts that have the show, This Is Us under a great debate about being "so good", "so sad", or "too emotional for me to consider watching". I, admittedly, am a HUGE fan. I started watching from its debut possibly because I knew that Milo Ventimiglia from my beloved Gilmore Girls, was going to star in it, or maybe because I fell in love with Mandy Moore when she sang my absolute favorite Disney princess song ever. Whatev

Hello friends, Let me introduce myself. I am Michayla, and if you didn't know, I am Shelly's favorite daughter and best friend forever. I would love to say that writing this post was easy for me and that I have an overwhelming amount of wisdom to bestow upon you, but I have to be honest. This was hard. First, I don't consider myself a great writer, and second, in the age of Pinterest you probably have read fourteen blog posts that all said the same things about being a bride.

I've mentioned that my little girl was getting married, right? Well, it happened, and I'm still finding it a little hard to believe that it's over. She went to college locally and hadn't moved out prior to her wedding, so we were able to spend a lot of time planning and preparing for her big day. Now that the busyness of it all has past, I'd like to share a few things I learned in our experience with a DIY family wedding, and I've asked Michayla to weigh in on the subject as

My daughter is getting married. We are full-on DIY-ers. And we love it. But it is a L.O.T. of work! Coupled with the fact that I have taken a new turn in my career, have two teenage boys that engage in various activities, a husband I enjoy spending as much time as possible with, extended family in the area, and friends I want to see, I've been busy. Sound familiar? It's kind of the way our society works. And yet, I seem to get the question "How DO you do it?" quite often. So,

I stand gazing out the kitchen window. Leafy droplets descend from trees, fluttering across the open space of a still-green lawn as they usher in the magical sensation of autumn. The air is crisp–not quite cold, but chilly enough to put on my first sweater of the season. I grab a steaming cup of coffee and open the door to the back deck. Breathe. The fresh morning feeds my soul. Don't miss a smell. A feeling. A color. A sound. Take it all in. Something sad has happened. Not t

Did you ever notice that toddler shoe sizes start at the number 5? At least, here in the US. It made me think about the saying we have, "act your age, not your shoes size." Funny. It's almost as if we correlate shoe size with behavioral expectation. When we have a toddler, how often do we take the time to teach and train her to follow expectations–like not dumping her Cheerios all over the floor while eating? As if she has a five-year-old reasoning that will rationalize the i

Growing up I was taught to have faith in God. I separated that from having faith in people, because along with a faith in God it was implicit that mankind could not be trusted. Fallible, awful creatures that we are. There's a history there that I won't go into now, but I'm sure you have seen evidence of religiosity versus faith at one point in your life. Religion ranked pretty darn high in mine. I think we've done a gross disservice associating anything to do with God to orga

This writing thing is throwing me for a loop. I know. Kinda sucks. I'm a writer. I recently had someone ask me if I feel pressured to "make it" now that I quit my full-time job and define myself as an author. Um, yeah. Totes presh. Not in the good way. But it's more than that. I feel an anxiety that is pulling at me like gravity, and I want to retreat. Curl back up into my shell and let the world spin around me. Because I get nauseated at the mere thought of putting my creati