About Us | Mama Bloggers | The Mama Creed

for consideration.

Do you have an event you would like to publicize? Be sure to add it to our calendar and forum. Our event guru Jennifer also publishes a weekly round-up of family-friendly events each Friday. For consideration, please email her at .

Mile High Mamas strives to use the very latest social networking tools and we want to keep you on the cutting edge. Please join us at Mama Talk Talk to learn the best tips, products, jobs and events. We can be found on Twitter and be sure to join our Facebook group for fun updates and freebies.

Our Mama-to-Mama message board is intended to connect Colorado moms who want to share tips, pose questions, vent frustrations or just make some friends. We encourage all parents to actively participate while showing respect to those with whom their views may differ. Vulgar and obscene comments will be immediately removed.

The site is moderated by the Editor, Amber Johnson. If you are a Colorado parent who blogs and would like to be included on our blogroll, please email her at . If you are interested in starting your own blog, checkout our blogging starter guide under Mama-to-Mama or a Non-Techie’s Guide to Blogging. Most importantly, we want to hear from you! Each week, Mile High Mamas publishes blog posts from guest bloggers. To submit a blog post to be considered for publication, please email Amber.

Though in its infancy, Mile High Mamas was a finalist in the National Newspaper Association’s Digital Edge Awards (”The Edgies”) and received an Honorable Mention for Web Site Excellence from the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ).

Remember above all else, this site is about you and for you as a mother. The participants determine its tone and direction. We encourage you to log on and help us make Mile High Mamas Colorado’s most enlightening, supportive and entertaining parenting Web site.

Mama Bloggers

AMBER BOROWSKI JOHNSON, EDITOR
Mile High Mamas is the brainchild of Amber, a former adventure-travel writer turned adventurous unraveling mother of two children. She attests the former birth was considerably less painful than the latter two, epidurals notwithstanding.

She is originally from Canada but spent a number of years working as a publicist for Utah’s ski and outdoor industry whilst moonlighting as a radio personality and travel writer. She relinquished her wanderlust life to marry the real love of her life six years ago.

She and her husband Jamie are outdoor aficionados and share this passion with their two children, Hadley (age 5) and Bode (age 2). Amber’s self-deprecating humor is her coping mechanism for the daily joys and mayhem of motherhood and is what has kept her sane. Well, most of the time. She consoles herself that all other lapses make for stellar blog fodder. And the fact she is married to a man who is obsessed with growing The Great Pumpkin.

Amber works as a strategist at Pixo Web Design & Strategy and loves teaching people about social media, including how to start their own blog and become acclimated on Twitter. She has been blogging at Crazy Bloggin’ Canuck since 2005. She has been the recipient of numerous blogging awards, including Mother’s Day Central’s Top 100 Mom Blogs, Best of MSN, Blogtrepreneur’s Top 50 Mommy Blogs and startup powerhouse Sampa’s Top 10 Mommy Blogs You Should Read. She is a family travel writer and a regular contributor at reputable travel sitesTravel Savvy Mom and Traveling Mom. Prior to launching Mile High Mamas, she was also a regular contributor at DotMoms, cited by Time magazine as one of the 50 Coolest Websites 2005. Twitter ID: @crazycanuckblog

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JOANN RASMUSSEN, ASSISTANT EDITOR
JoAnn and her husband have lived in Colorado for over a decade. They’d tried to leave the Midwest on New Year’s Day 1999, but Mother Nature had other plans: a raging blizzard had shut down all escape routes out of Iowa…for three days. Off schedule, but the mountains in their sights, they set out after the first snowplow cleared a path across the plains. Rather than see the blizzard as a sign to turn back, they knew it was proof that they were making the right decision.

JoAnn and her husband have traveled the world together and have had many adventures in the 12+ years they’ve lived together. They met after they’d both graduated from college, and JoAnn’s husband is still working in his field of study. JoAnn, on the other hand, has changed paths many times. Social Worker, Corporate Drone, Adventure Vacation Travel Consultant, Sales Director, and Independent Contractor are some titles that she has collected over the years. In November of 2005, their little girl was born, and JoAnn added the title, Momma to Claire, to her résumé.

In 2007, JoAnn started a blog. She wanted a creative outlet for her writing that would also give her an easy way to chronicle their forays into parenthood and share their adventures with their relatives back in the Midwest. At the time, she was in the midst of juggling a baby while working from a home office, and writing was one of the ways she was able to find some semblance of sanity. In 2008, JoAnn had the opportunity to quit her “real job” and focus on parenting and writing, two of her passions.

JoAnn has combined these two passions at The Casual Perfectionist, where she writes as Momma. She is a self-proclaimed perfectionist, but doesn’t consider herself to be the stuffy, up-tight kind. She’s more of a casual perfectionist, hence the name of her website. She tries her hardest to focus on the positive, learn from the negative, and laugh at both. In fact, she is a firm believer in the notion that if you haven’t laughed today, you weren’t really paying attention. Twitter ID: @casualperfect

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GRETCHEN WHITE, BLOGGER EXTRAORDINAIRE
Gretchen was born in Denver in the early 1970s. Her first six years were spent in the suburbs, out in the middle of nowhere near Hampden and I-25. She thought the center of the universe was the big fountain at Cinderella City and that Mayor McNichols and Mayor McCheese were brothers.

Then her father got news. His job was being transfered to a place with no mall. No escalators. No fountains. No Elitches. Quite rudely she was taken from Denver to the remote desert and peach-dotted landscape of Grand Junction. It was a good thing, ultimately. She learned to love the astounding natural beauty of our state. She realized if she couldn’t be entertained by the offerings of a big city, she’d have to entertain herself. So she began to read and write and plot ways to escape. After high school graduation, she joined the tie-dyed masses at CU-Boulder, promising her friends back home she’d never, ever change. But she did.

After three years of classes like Ancient Athletics, she returned home to Grand Junction where she got a job slinging burritos and beer at a local favorite hangout. Not content to forever ask “red or green chili?” she enrolled at Mesa State College, where she met her future husband, Lee. They each earned a BA in English Literature. Shortly after graduation, they married and settled into a quiet life in the Grand Valley. Their first daughter, Aidan, was born in 1997. Their second child, a boy named Ryley, came along a mere 18 months later. Job prospects for English majors weren’t abundant in the Grand Valley, so they decided to move back to the Denver metro area in mid-1999.

Five more kids have joined the family since returning to the front range and another is on the way. Their names are Sam, Tommy, Joel, Beatrix and Archer. Life with seven kids is never quiet, so she began blogging in 2004 as a way to record and reflect on the whirlwind. She calls her blog Lifenut. She is also a regular contributor for the popular blog 5 Minutes for Parenting.

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LORI, BLOGGER EXTRAORDINAIRE
Lori has lived in Arvada for most of her life, except for forays to Kansas (college), Japan (searching for self), Syria (adventure with new husband), and Denver proper (fixing up an old Victorian, pre-kids). She is now raising her two children in the same zip code where she grew up.

Major transitions in Lori’s life tend to come with a twist. There were twists in the way she met and married Rob (involving comedy improv and a DiamondVision scoreboard), in the way she became mom to Tessa (involving a dying man’s vision and a batch of cookie dough during labor), and in how she became mom to Reed (involving a battle and a blizzard). The twists are all good.

Lori writes at Weebles Wobblog about adoptive parenting, open adoption, spirituality, and 1970s trivia. She spoke at Blogher08 about Adoption/Loss/Infertility (ALI) issues and she is a Contributing Editor at Bridges, an awareness consortium of compassionate bloggers. She founded ColoBloggers for Coloradoans in the ALI community. She is tickled pink to be a Mile High Mama Blogger.

Lori is passionate about de-freakifying open adoption for people considering this path to parenthood. She and her daughter’s birthmom teach at Colorado Free University and speak at adoption agencies on how (and why) to create successful open adoptions. Lori’s adoption stories are told at Drama 2B Mama. Twitter ID: @bestlight

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AIMEE GREEBLEMONKEY, BLOGGER EXTRAORDINAIRE
Aimee was born in Maryland but moved to Denver in 1994, after an exhaustive road trip around the country that led her and her husband-to-be Bryan to feel that Denver was the perfect mix of the big, small, fun, funky, energetic, and most importantly - friendly. They married in 1996 and finally jumped into the parenthood gig in 2002 with their one and only son Declan. Yes, that’s an Irish name that you may or may not have ever heard before but the musically inclined may know it is also Elvis Costello’s real name.

Both Aimee and Bryan are graphic designers and web developers, specializing in health education sites…the content of which tends to color all aspects of their lives. It’s good to believe in what you are building!

Aimee also has recently reached back into her past and rekindled her long-time love of photography. Primarily focusing on nature close-ups and portraiture, Aimee has been extra busy in her time away from her family and work taking tons of photographs, many of which are featured on her personal blog, Greeblemonkey. Her blog was recently nominated for a coveted Bloggie award as the blogosphere’s “best-kept secret.” Aimee also takes pottery classes for yet one more creative outlet.

Aimee, Bryan and Declan like to laugh a lot, which is reflected in her writing - and her outlook on life. Twitter ID: @greeblemonkey

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JULIE MARSH, BLOGGER EXTRAORDINAIRE
Julie moved from New York to Denver with her family in 2005. Prior to New York, she lived in Northern Virginia and was born and raised in Dayton, Ohio - where she met her future husband Kyle just prior to graduating from college. Both of them were Air Force officers, which meant that even though they got married in 1997, they celebrated their second anniversary before they ever moved in together. Both left the military in 1999.

Unencumbered by the whims of the government, Julie and Kyle moved to New York (because if you can make it there, you’ll make it anywhere). Julie worked as an IT project manager for a record company and was three months pregnant with their first child - Anastasia - on 9/11. Their second child - Catherine - was born in 2005 and baby Oliver made his entrance into the world in January. They now happily reside in a suburb south of Denver.

While Julie admittedly longs for the mean streets of New York, she loves Colorado - the wide blue skies, the biking trails, the comparatively low cost of living, and the abundance of Fat Tire beer. And while she occasionally misses bantering with her New York co-workers, she loves all of her new online enterprises. She co-founded The Parent Bloggers Network - an online media network that connects bloggers with business owners and PR professionals - and she writes for Cool Mom Picks, The Imperfect Parent, and her personal weblog The Mom Slant. Twitter ID: @momslant

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BECKIE MOSTELLO, MAMA TECH TALK EDITOR
Beckie grew up surrounded by cornfields in Indiana. She did NOT grow up on a farm, but her small school, K-12, was literally right next to a sheep farm. She remembers petting the sheep through the fence in elementary school. For some reason, Beckie always knew she was not going to stay in Indiana and had always dreamed of living somewhere out West.

Beckie met her husband through some mutual friends. Funny thing is Beckie and her husband, Steve, grew up two blocks away from each other, but never dated until they met while home on break from two different colleges. After getting married in 1994, it was off to live in Chicago for a couple of years and then to San Francisco. There she taught Special Education. In California, Beckie and Steve developed a love for hiking and biking–a much different lifestyle than watching football in Chicago bars all weekend because it was too cold to do anything else! After spending a couple of years experiencing the California lifestyle and realizing just how expensive the California lifestyle really is, Beckie and Steve decided to move to Colorado rather than head back to the Midwest.

In her pre-mommy life in Colorado, Beckie taught 5th grade for Jefferson County Schools. She enjoyed teaching the dreaded Growth and Development Unit and helping young students strive for success. In 2003, Beckie had her daughter, Emma, and decided to stay home and be a full-time mommy. In 2007, Steve and Beckie welcomed Tommy to the family. Beckie has recently entered the wonderful world of blogging through the request of her friend Lisa Welch, owner of BornFit. Lisa wanted to start a blog for her business, but could not find the time. Beckie has since built and maintained the BornFit blog and started Tech-Talk for Moms, a blog to help mom entrepreneurs navigate the world of social media. Beckie currently manages social media for BornFit, as well as teaches and consults with businesses about Social Media.

In all of her spare time, which is not much, Beckie enjoys hiking with her husband and now instead of looking at cornfields all day, Beckie gets to watch beautiful sunsets complimented with mountain silhouettes reflected in Standley Lake, right in her own backyard! (But she does miss the great sweet taste of Indiana farm-stand corn.) Twitter ID: techtalkformoms

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MELISSA TAYLOR, IMAGINATION SOUP EDITOR
Melissa lives in Mommy-land, otherwise known as Anywhere, Colorado, with two clever children and one handsome husband. No pets — she would forget to feed them and the children would be devastated.

Here’s what you must know about Melissa. She can be bribed with coffee. She starts to hyperventilate at a glimpse of a yard sale sign. She cannot go into book store without buying a book – for her kids. And her favorite thing to do is fall asleep with both her girls snuggled in around her. (Sorry handsome husband.)

Melissa blogs at Inside Outside Upside Down and designed Imagination Soup because she’s an Un-Martha kind of mom– looking for easy, fun things to do with kids. Oh, and wouldn’t it be great if they learned something, too? Yup. That’s what she wanted for herself and that’s Imagination Soup. Stir in her experience teaching, training teachers, reading voraciously, freelance writing, raising two unique and did I mention, clever, children, and an irreverent style and voila, you have Imagination Soup. Twitter ID: @melissawrites

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JENNIFER, EVENT GURU

Jennifer grew up in the mountain community of Conifer before there was a mountain community in Conifer, let alone a Safeway. She still has family there, so visits often, but has made the Metro area her home since graduating from CU-Boulder in 1991. She fell in love with the smartest, cutest, funniest, coolest geek she could find and married him in 1998. All these years later, she continues to be grateful that there is always a working computer in the house and something great on the iPod.

Thinking a girl might be a nice change of pace, Jennifer instead had a third boy, and realized that she is not meant to share her throne with anyone (until the daughters-in-law come along). She is now the benevolent leader of a pack of boys, including an exceptionally brilliant second grader, an amazingly talented kindergartner, and a 20-month-old who refuses to believe he is not 5 years old, despite all evidence to the contrary. He supports his argument by citing his ability to pretend to play the Wii, and the fact that he can accurately identify Indiana Jones and Yoda. Rounding out the group is Jennifer’s fabulous husband (see above), and the family dog, who is of undetermined age and origin, but still mostly male.

In 2006, Jennifer and her husband traded in their hip digs in North Denver for a giant yard in Centennial, and she’s been looking for a coffee shop within walking distance ever since. Coyotes and snakes notwithstanding, Old Centennial (which is to say, the portion west of I-25 and south of Arapahoe Road) is not so bad. And it actually is true what they say about the schools.

Jennifer holds a bachelors degree in Broadcast Production and Management and a masters degree in Counseling Psychology. Prior to having children she worked in the dynamic world of reference book publishing. Now, on any given day, Jennifer can be found in one of the following places: The gym, perpetually trying to get back into shape and never quite succeeding; the school; driving to and from sports practices and events; or grocery shopping. She also makes a game of never going to the mall, despite its proximity to Costco, and enjoys looking for ways to avoid cleaning the house. Jennifer thinks some day she might use her degrees for something other than videotaping her kids’ antics or parenting those kids, but for now she’s pretty content to watch the boys run amok.

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KATE, LEAD MODERATOR

Kate is responsible for keeping our mama-to-mama discussion boards hoppin’! She grew up (mostly) in a suburb of Wichita, Kansas (you’re thinking, Wichita is big enough to have suburbs?) and is a Coloradoan by marriage: her husband grew up in Arvada. They met during their college years while interns at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. It was geek love at first sight when the math girl snared herself an engineer!

They married in 1997 in Boulder, where her husband finished his graduate work. Jobs took them to the Los Angeles area for a few years, Kate completed a master’s degree in creative writing, and then they recovered their senses and moved back to the Denver area, just in time to have kids. They have a sandwich cookie family: boy-girl-boy, ages 4 years, 2.5 years and 5 months.

Kate takes her own three-ring circus everywhere she goes. She struggles with existential questions such as who she is now that she’s a stay-at-home mom and whether scrambled eggs count as a good supper. She is currently working on her second young adult novel while she shops the first one with literary agents.

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The Mama Creed

Welcome to Mile High Mamas, a place for area moms to connect and reflect.

Where isolation is obsolete, laughter reigns and judgments cease.

We are in the prime of our lives. If we were slabs of meat. And since we are not, we are over-tired mamas who love our children.

But don’t necessarily always like what they do.

We dream of a maid but live under our laundry pile.

We relish Girl’s Night Out, mini-vacations and playgroups.

We don’t always shower but manage to look purdy anyway.

We believe our children are brilliant, beautiful and blessings.

That toddlers and teen-agers are terrors terrific.

We believe Teletubbies are of the devil.

We acknowledge that insecurities, frustrations and calamities are a part of motherhood.

Above all, we laugh, learn, cry and vent.

And it is here we are reminded that we are not alone.

P.S. We like chocolate. Lots of it.