Single Parents

Single on Valentine’s Day date? No problem!

Are you single on Valentine’s Day? Our Valentine’s Day activity round-up also has family-friendly fun as well as a Galentines getaway! I have a love/hate relationship with Valentine’s Day. On the one hand, I can’t get enough chocolate.  When I was pregnant with my son (who was born on February 11th), my craving went into hyperdrive and I went through several boxes of Hershey’s Pot of Gold. Every day. I’m kind of surprised he didn’t come out covered in some sort of caramel with a nougat center.  And when he didn’t sleep for weeks after his birth, I wasn’t sure if it was due to the typical newborn nighttime-is-the-best-time-to-be-awake schedule or if he was all hopped up on sugar and trying to detox. So, that’s the part of Valentine’s Day I like – the candy that I could...

15 Holiday Toy Drives in Denver: How to Help Colorado Kids

The holidays in Denver can be downright magical and we recently published our Holiday Guide to Fun in Denver with many free activities and light displays. But with the rising costs in Colorado, many of our friends and neighbors are struggling to make ends make. Please join us if you are able in helping make these Colorado kids’ Christmas wishes come true with these Christmas Toy Drives in Denver. Not in the financial position to donate? Many of these wonderful companies are looking for holiday volunteers so be sure to reach out to them. Also, do you want to give back to your favorite non-profit? Consider making your Amazon purchases on AmazonSmile.com, where they will donate 0.5% of your eligible purchases to the charity or school of your choice. Simply go to Your Account, Select Ama...

50+ Ideas for Mother’s Day in Denver: Events, Brunch and More!

It’s almost Mother’s Day in the Mile High City and we are here for all the activities, brunches and events. Scroll down to see our Mother’s Day gift guide as well and be sure to bookmark this page and check back often as we hear of other fabulous family-friendly events to celebrate our moms.  Mother’s Day Events in Denver Colorado Chocolate Festival May 6-7 Sample and buy the finest chocolates in Colorado with tastings, samples, cooking demos, fun contests, chocolatier championships, games, kid’s activities and gifts. Held at the Crowne Plaza on I-70 in Denver.  cochocolatefests.com Decoupage Flower Pots + First Drink is Free at LUKI Brewery May 7, 2-3 p.m.    Decoupage, the art of decorating objects with paper cut-outs, is very important i...

Get Free Tickets for Denver Museums & Attractions at the Public Library!

Denver has world-class attractions and museums but visiting them is not always affordable. That’s why we recently published Denver Free Days for 2022 with free access to your favorite family-friendly Denver attractions. Don’t want to battle the crowds on Denver’s free days? We don’t blame you! Here is how you can use your public library card to reserve a day at Denver’s best museums for free. Participating cultural institutions include the Butterfly Pavilion, the Denver Trolley, Denver Zoo, History Colorado Center, the Colorado Railroad Museum, DMNS and more.  Bonus: Love Denver? Keep exploring with the Essential Denver: Discovery and Exploration Guide (many attractions are free!)  Also, scroll down to see our top picks for Denver’s best playgr...

Don’t miss this beautiful portrayal of the toll and rewards of motherhood

You don’t have to be a skier or a single mom to deeply feel all the feelings of Arc’teryx’s 13-minute film: Motherhood.  It is often said that the hardest part of any adventure is getting out the door. Planning and packing are tedious and time-consuming. But the moment you cross over the threshold from the distractions of the real world to the freedom of the hills, everything seems to just fall into place. (Said no mother ever.)   Follow professional skiers and mothers Izzy Lynch and Tessa Treadway as they carry the load of loss, life changing events, and the love of their children into the mountains where they find the moments of peace, growth and healing that help them carry on.

My road-trip through Dolly Parton’s America during a pandemic

I just got back from taking my oldest daughter to college in Nashville, a trip I’d been dreading since…well…I guess since March 2020. Haley had come home on March 9, 2020, packed for a weeklong spring break. Ten months later she went back. The 2020 spring semester was scary, but easier – the school had made the decision of whether or not she should return to campus for us when they closed like so many other universities. But I spent the summer sweating (literally), wondering if she would return in the fall. After careful consideration, she decided to stay home and take online classes, saving the money for room and board, and I had a four-month reprieve on making a trip I didn’t want to take. But in January 2021 it was time to go back. This was stressful for me...

5 Tips to Foster a Peaceful Colorado Divorce and Co-parenting Strategy

We often view divorce as an event. As if one day you announce, “I’m getting a divorce,” and the next day your marriage is over. The truth is, it’s a journey. It’s a process. It’s a method by which you transition out of your marriage and re-prioritize your relationships, especially your relationship with yourself. Sometimes there is still love. Sometimes the love that once was has long been extinguished.  But one thing is certain, hardly anyone leaves their marriage hoping for a nightmare, never-ending, high conflict, expensive divorce that never ends. They breed animosity, undermine already broken relationships and drain precious resources of time, energy and money from the family. But it doesn’t have to be that way. If your divorce is headed down the (legal) rabbit hole, there ...

When Divorce, Chairs and Teeth Collide

The hardest day of my life: I hadn’t been separated from Antonia and Jonah’s father for even a month when a horrible accident happened. Jonah, my three-year-old, had spilled his glass of milk all over my dining room floor about a half-hour before it was time to take them to the police station, which at that time was the parent-exchange location every Sunday. In retrospect, I should have left the stupid milk sprawled to lay where it may until coming back home from dropping them off. I should have been savoring that last half hour I had with them. But the milk on the floor bothered me. And I’m not even a neat freak, by any stretch of the imagination. Nonetheless, for whatever reason, I felt it needed to be cleaned up immediately. I would live to regret that small decision for a very, very lo...

Custody Battles in the Time of COVID-19

Protecting Your Family Through the Toughest Times It may seem obvious, but you need to think about your child’s best interests when going through your custody arrangements. In a time where your children might not have any buffer between them and their parents’ personal lives, you will need to be even more sensitive than usual. We’ve seen a lot of divorces through our firm, and not all of them were pleasant or collaborative, and none of them would be made easier by a stay-at-home order. Of the messy divorces we’ve handled, some of the most difficult arguments we’ve seen are related to custody arrangements. The thing is, not all the parents we’ve negotiated with and argued with are bad parents. In fact, a lot of them are great and loving parents. In times such as these, when your entire case...

Living a full life through and after divorce

Divorce is tough, so why are these women from Mothering & Daughtering smiling?   Because Elizabeth Cohen has a roadmap for a mama who is considering divorce, in the middle of a divorce, or post-divorce. When she went through a divorce as a young mother, she couldn’t find the support and resources she needed and, frankly, longed for.   So she created a program. Elizabeth Cohen is a psychologist who has broken the inevitable-depletion-during-and-after-divorce-code and has created a program so mamas like you don’t have to go it alone. Mothering & Daughtering recently shared this video:   Are you thriving or just surviving after a divorce? How is co-parenting going? What has this conversation brought up for you?  

My Nightingale Baby: Living with MS as a single mom

Finding out you are going to be a mom in the same month you are diagnosed with multiple sclerosis is one sure way to begin a crazy adventure, to say the least. Emotions for me at that time were so night and day that it was very hard at first. A roller-coaster for sure. I was excited, the thought of being a mama, a baby of my own, wow!  Then I would immediately get emotional, what if I bring a baby into this world and it ends up with my newly declared disease. My pregnancy was honestly one of the roughest things I have ever been through. Most moms would agree, pregnancy is rough in some ways, mine however was rough on me in every way. The first time I went into pre-term labor, I was twenty weeks. I was rushed to Denver to have an emergency cerclage placed so th...

Take THAT, Dead Husband: Decorating my House for Christmas

In some ways, Christmas is the one time of the year that I embrace my widowhood. I know that sounds a little heartless, but hear me out before you make that judgment. It has nothing to do with how much I miss my husband – that’s something I can’t even put into words. And every year, I go through the usual heartbreak that most people my situation do: I stare at the empty chair my husband used to occupy for Christmas dinner. I apologize to my dad because he is now the person forced to wrestle my tree into the stand. I grit my teeth while shopping for the electronics my kids have on their Christmas lists that I don’t understand and will never fully know how to operate.

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