“Time is free, but it’s priceless.  You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it you can never get it back." Harvey Mackay Throughout our parenting journey, time seemed to be one of the hardest things to come by and manage.  There’s never enough time! Yet, we discovered that we did make time for the things that are important to us. In [...]

Our Encouraging Courage (Girls) Letter ,last week, was a neat little message that had clear edges and the takeaways fit the title where we came away looking like competent parents. But life isn’t always so cut and dried. Encouraging the heart can often seem like vague platitudes that miss the mark and confound parents and frustrate children. That was the case when dealing with our son Kevin whose sweet spirit was a puzzle to us in the [...]

These Letters are intended to provide you with whatever insights we have gained over the last 35 years of parenting and marriage.  Our perspectives are not comprehensive, just intending to spark thought on how to take your parenting and marriage to the next level of effectiveness.  There is so much to say to you which we hope is instructive and encouraging, perspectives we wish we had ‘back in the day’. We had to figure it [...]

“Be more patient, be an active listener, be consistent…” these are just some of the more common “Top Parenting Tips” you’ll find when searching around the Internet.  And we would agree with many of those tips.  However, we thought it would be fun, and encouraging, to provide you with our top ten parenting tips that have impacted us the most over the years. 10) Have fun and enjoy your kids – It was very easy for [...]

Parenting through the hubbub of the holidays can often leave one craving some downtime, taking the foot off the gas pedal of busyness and obligation, and just chilling with a warm mug of leftover Christmas glögg (Swedish warm spiced wine). Maybe after carving the ham, you can carve out some time before the New Year to think about the coming year. The fundamentals of life envisioned and acted upon, lead to growth, well-being, and happiness. [...]

Impacting and transforming families is at the heart of OneFamily.  We believe that begins with a healthy marriage. Over the years we have seen many parents come to a parenting class only to discover that the primary issue in their family dynamic is not parenting, but their marriage.  Typically, it’s one or a combination of these areas that is the issue: Lost Marriage Priority – Primary focus has been on children at the expense of [...]

OneFamily has partnered with several wonderful organizations to help families succeed in creating a life-giving home environment where marriages become stronger and children are thriving with effective parenting. What you may not be aware of is that we also reach Spanish speaking communities through UnaFamilia – Spanish is the third most spoken language in the world. Last year we highlighted Ministerio LA (Los Angeles, CA) and our friends the Pulidos. Through their ministry we’ve been [...]

The demands and pressure of life sometimes become overwhelming.  As a result, we can get sidetracked from the meaningful things our hearts desire – like being a good intentional parent.  In desperation, we look for the one thing or a quick online resource to help us to put a “Band-Aid” on whatever issue of the day we’re dealing with in the moment.  All the while, we keep thinking (hoping) that we’ll have time later to [...]

Impacting families in a transformative way is at the heart of our mission with OneFamily! It’s about building a loving and thriving home environment where children and marriages are flourishing with everyone growing, maturing, and feeling emotionally connected with one another. This means equipping families with practical resources, and encouraging them through the challenging days to persevere while sustaining them in their marriage and parenting journey. Today, families and marriages are facing challenges like never [...]

Is your family characterized by having an attitude of gratitude?  When creating family identity do you cultivate and teach gratitude?  Among the many reasons we love the Holiday Season, Thanksgiving to Christmas, is that it provided us a wonderful opportunity to build our family identity through family traditions that encouraged Trevor and Alex’s young hearts towards internalizing the virtue of gratitude. Family Identity with Family Traditions Family identity is an anchor for you and your [...]