Blogging Momma Steele

 Oh, the clutter!  Everyone who knows me well knows that I am a consistent cleaner. If I am honest, this tendency to clean all the time was born through the trauma of being removed from our home (on several different occasions) when I was a child. Those experiences were so traumatic for me that they bled over into my life as an adult, a wife, and a mother. How? In a nutshell, looking bad, it seems I increased the amount of cleaning in my home every time I had a child. AND I had FIVE! No joke, when my children were little, I thoroughly cleaned my entire home before going to sleep EVERY night. What's worse, is that many of those days I also worked a fulltime job. Before you think it-- I knew I was a good mother and my children were well cared for, but in my mind my home being clean was one more reason no one could take my children from me should officials ever show up at my door. All but one of my children are now adults and I still clean my home crazy like. About five years ago...

Welcome Friends,  I know it has been a gazillion years but every second is a new second to get started.  This is me: My nickname is Laci. I am 45 years old. I am the wife of Stewart for 28 years now and counting. We have six children. Ashley (my stepdaughter) 32, Spencer 27, Sean 26, Todd and Troy 24, and Connor 12.  We have three grandchildren, Canon (5), Tauriel (4), and Aria (3). We also have a fur-pup named Max. My husband, Connor, and I live in the desert in Rio Rancho, New Mexico.  I am currently in school working on my second master degree with a focus in Crisis Counseling. My first master degree is in elementary education, my bachelor is in interdisciplinary studies with elementary education minor, and my associates is in arts with early childhood education focus. What I enjoy most is being my husband's best friend, being a mother, being a grandmother, and being a  friend. Our life has mostly focused on God, our marriage, our children, volunteering, and ...

Welcome Back! It's been a while but a ton of stuff called life has got in the way of blogging! Who knew that could happen? I heard once years back "If it weren't for change there would be no butterflies"... with that, change is exactly what is happening here. No revamping the wheel just moving forward with an updated focus. When this blog started, parenting and teaching was my life and many of our friends wanted us to share how we parented so well, but life changes. We have moved on.. literally.... We are now in Rio Rancho, New Mexico. A long way from South Florida and about 9 hours west of Chickasha, Oklahoma where God planted us for two years. We began with 6 children in our home, but over the last two years all of our adult children moved out and into careers and lives of their own. It's now officially my husband, our nine year old son, and me-- Living this crazy, aweful beautiful life together. See, changes! Our son Spencer is now a police officer in Oklahoma....

One of the best things that ever happened to me was becoming a stepmom. I have heard horror stories about stepchildren and stepparents, but I actually enjoy being a stepmom.  I looked forward to weekend visits, long summer breaks, spring breaks, and Christmas breaks because I knew my stepdaughter would be home and for those moments our family would once again be complete. In fact, my only regret was that those visits were not longer!  To begin with, I honestly didn't know how to be a stepmom or how to even handle being a stepmom. Growing up, I cannot recall anyone I knew who was a stepmom. I remember being so nervous the first day I would met my stepdaughter. As I waited for her to arrive, I pondered over how to feel about her and one thought alone came to me. It was simple: if I loved the person who would possibly become my future husband, then I would have to love everything about him including her. With that, my fears were instantly calmed. Before long, she arrived and...

I have obviously taken a longer leave of absence than I originally expected from blogging. I started this blog to share our successes as parents, but life happened and I am not sure what direction this blog may take moving forward. As many of you know, our family went through a major life change that began as a career change moving us halfway across the country. It was exciting, scary, and all and all, a move that totally disrupted the life that we knew. It had more changes than we expected and in addition to learning to live in a new place, adjusting to a new career position, meeting new people, and gaining an understanding of the mid-western culture, we have found ourselves learning to live as a family of three instead of our more larger family of seven. I honestly do not know what has been more difficult to handle, the relocation halfway across the country or watching our family go through very unexpected changes.  In a matter of 13 months, all of our adult children hav...

Hello, Hello, Hello!  It is good to be writing. I have slipped away for three months with good reason, but that is not what this blog is about. This blog is about how important it is to have a schedule for your children and how important it is to get things back on track when anything unexpected happens and throws your entire day, week, month---- heck, even life off track.  This is something I accomplished quick when our adult children were little. Little League game ran into extra innings-- no problem, I brought afternoon snacks with us... Children got sick and had to stay home from school... No problem, I had soup in the cabinet and movies on standby... Grandma sneaks to town to visit... Ouch, Grandma changes everything, so you have to give Grandma guidelines, lol... But what about a real life, huge, out of the park move from South Florida to Central Oklahoma move? .....That is exactly what happened to our family.  Here goes.. The last week of July, my husband...