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Continue reading →: Tryout Season, Uncle Gary & Growing Up
There’s something beautifully Canadian about a holiday Monday that smells faintly of wet grass, charcoal, and nostalgia. 🇨🇦 Like the entire country collectively exhaling into Muskoka chairs. Victoria Day always feels like the unofficial gateway into summer. Growing up, it meant the carnival at Memorial Park, fireworks after dark, and…
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Continue reading →: Rewiring After the Storm: Coffee Talk on Addiction, Resilience, and Parenting in 2026
Come sit on my couch for a minute. Coffee in hand. Fireplace on. Hockey bags by the door. A competitive gymnast’s grips drying on the counter because chalk is now a permanent design choice in this home. If someone yells about missing tape or a charger, that is just the…
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Continue reading →: Bartending Taught Me Everything I Know About Human Behaviour
(Pull Up a Stool. This Won’t Take Long.) I started bartending at 20. At the same time, I was studying human behaviour in school, where I learned that humans are complex, emotional, and largely irrational creatures who believe they are making very reasonable choices. Then I would go to work…
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Continue reading →: Family Strong (Or: A Weekend Powered by Effort, Hockey Tape, and Expectations)
Deep in playoffs and another win for Ben, because why wouldn’t there be? At this point, his season feels less like a schedule and more like a greatest-hits album on repeat. Win after win after win. No notes. Just vibes. And maybe some sore legs. This weekend, however, was not…
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Continue reading →: Chicken Soup for the Millennial’s Soul
This is for the millennial era who survived low-rise skinny jeans.Not metaphorically. Anatomically. We lived through whale tails, butterfly clips, frosted eyeshadow, cargo pants with seventeen pockets and zero purpose, platform flip flops that hated our ankles, trucker hats, popped collars, and Abercrombie & Fitch stores that felt like a nightclub…
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Continue reading →: Somewhere Between the Dance Studio and the Hockey Rink, I Misplaced Myself
There is a very specific exhaustion that comes from scheduling your life in fifteen-minute blocks and still being late. It smells like rink air and sounds like dance music played one count too loud. It looks like a calendar, full of colour-coded messes (think toddler-style scribbling in ALL the colours)…
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Continue reading →: The Kids, the Chaos, and the Brady Bunch Reality Check
By the time Chris came along in October 2024, my life was already loud, busy, and held together by calendars, carpool agreements, and sheer force of will. Jaidyn was fifteen and fully in the era where the world is dictated by her schedule, her opinions, and the immediate emotional importance…
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Continue reading →: Making Peace With Being the Villain in Someone Else’s Story
At some point in adulthood, usually right around the time your calendar fills up with school events, sports schedules and responsibilities multiply quietly, something uncomfortable becomes clear. You are the villain in someone else’s story. Not because you are cruel.Not because you are wrong.But because every story needs one. I’ve…
Hello,
I’m Alanna
Hi, I’m Alanna… a solo-turned-blended mom navigating life with five kids, two bonus kids, one very dramatic cat, and a fiancé I somehow convinced to join this circus willingly. I write about real-life parenting, big family chaos, solo motherhood survival, raising teens and tweens, mom-of-multiples life, blended family dynamics, and rebuilding after the kind of relationship chaos that could be its own Netflix limited series. If you’re looking for a perfectly curated, aesthetically pleasing motherhood blog… you have taken a VERY wrong turn. But if you want honest stories, dark humour, mom wit, and a front-row seat to the beautiful disaster that is raising seven children in a blended family while wrangling a cat who clearly runs this house… welcome. You belong here. I talk openly about life after bring married to an addict, “co-parenting”, starting over, finding joy again, and how love shows up when you least expect it (usually when you’re busy yelling at someone to pick up their socks). So grab a coffee… or something stronger. This is motherhood, but with sarcasm, resilience, and absolutely zero shame.
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