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We all have those dream vacations we’ve been planning in our heads for years, but those often require passport applications or renewals, long-haul flights and the plotting of detailed itineraries to ensure the trip goes off without a hitch. Those trips are all well and good, but that doesn’t mean you have to wait for everything to fall perfectly into place before you next pack your bags and head out on the road. We don’t necessarily recommend dropping what you are doing right this moment and turning on your “out of office” message, but if you can hold out until...

Every parent wants what’s best for their child. Name included. But what makes a good name that will follow the baby through life is debatable. Some say it has to stand out from the crowd, others think it should still be a human name and not the name of a fruit (like Gwyneth Paltrow’s daughter Apple), and here you have different parenting styles and approaches clashing again and again. But let’s take a look at what random people, passersby on the streets and fellow members of society have to say about the baby names they cannot stand. At least they’re...

Hello…it’s another year and another UFO Dirty Dozen Challenge.  If you’ve been here a while, you know that Mary at Country Threads Chicken Scratch blog hosts a Dirty Dozen Challenge.  Participants number their UFOs 1-12 then each month Mary picks a number.  Participants refer back to their list and then work on the project that was chosen.  I’ve been fairly successful with this in the past even though I stray and don’t always follow the directions.  I’m a rebel, what can I say.  Mary is very loose with the “rules” and flexible so it’s all good. This year Mary has...

After suffering from fatigue, brain fog, joint pain, and chronic headaches and migraines, Laura reversed her autoimmune symptoms by changing her diet and lifestyle using the Autoimmune Protocol. As a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner and AIP Certified Coach, she is passionate about helping other women in their journey to better health.  Laura has been featured on CBS, WUSA9, Great Day Washington, and in Paleo Magazine, Washingtonian Magazine, and Tysons Premiere Magazine. When she’s not working with clients, you can find Laura playing games with her two boys, cheering on Duke basketball with her husband (they met while attending college at Duke!),...

The pandemic has taken a devastating toll on our children. Most kids are still falling behind either socially, emotionally, or educationally, experts say. Absenteeism in school is up, and behavioral issues and mental health problems among kids abound.The research backs this up. A study out of the Brookings Institute revealed that test scores over the length of the pandemic have dropped significantly in math and reading, comparably worse than for kids during other school disruptions like after Hurricane Katrina. And in the later years of the pandemic, the numbers got worse, not better. Other research has shown that kids are...