Kids and Food: Feeding Themselves for Life - Jenny Muilenburg

National Childhood Obesity Awareness is a commitment I have as a mom and caring person. Like many parents, I think about and prepare food a LOT. I’ve casually told friends that I spend 80% of my waking hours in the kitchen, prepping for, feeding, and cleaning up from feeding a full house. It might be a slight exaggeration – but only slight.

Feeding kids can be hard. There are so many blogs and cookbooks and TV shows where parents tell you that they’ve got it all worked out, as they sit down with their…

Island Life - Jenny Muilenburg

My family had the great fortune of spending most of August in a house in the middle of the wooded end of an island in Puget Sound. This was a big switch from the suburban city life we usually live, the one where we can drive to anything we want, and can walk to the pool and the library. Here, the mailbox is a mile down the gravel road, and the nearest store is at least a 20 minute drive. The county bus doesn’t even come down as far as we are – the closest stop is 5 miles…

Walking as a Family - Jenny Muilenburg

The only time we took private transportation during our European vacation was when the Amsterdam train station had a computer malfunction. None of the trains ran for several hours, and shortly before we were to take a tram over to the station, our hotel warned us and helped us book a private car.

This means we walked just about everywhere. We took trams and trains and subways and boats, but everything else was on foot. As we talked about how far we’d walked on our trip, the kids lamented the fact that we hadn&rsquo…

How Sick Kids Give You Perspective: Traveling with Family - Jenny Muilenburg

The day before we were scheduled to take our six kids on an 18-day backpacking trip around Europe, my 3-year-old threw up. Repeatedly. At night. Each time, he woke my husband and me with a very cute voice saying, “I puked again.”

This wasn’t a complete surprise. About ten days earlier, my 7- and 10-year-olds had spent a night vomiting. It was a short virus: just a few hours of stomach illness, followed by a low-energy day. Since it had been so many days since they’d been sick, I figured we…

Mental Yoga, or How I Survived 18 Days in Europe with Six Kids - Jenny Muilenburg

I can’t imagine my life without yoga.

There, I said it. I imagine many readers immediately painted a picture of me: I must be vegan, I must adore patchouli, I must rock a handstand, weigh 100 pounds and be a former dancer who only wears Lululemon.

I’m none of those things, but then, there isn’t one kind of yogi, much as there isn’t one kind of mom, or cycling enthusiast, or CEO. We’re all complicated, multifaceted creatures that are the sum of our varied and varying…