Sharoya, Angi and I talk about different aspects of kids leaving the house, having fewer family members around, and what happens when they come back home? Some great suggestions for keeping the peace, making the most out of the new additional space ... and making sure you have beds for everyone when/if they come back home!

We all know that our kids are supposed to grow up, go to uni, and then go off on their own. This is our primary goal as parents: help foster independence, innate curiosity, caring and capable humans to go contribute to something. Sometimes, real life rears its head and they come home unexpectedly. You may think you're going to be an empty nester but at any given point, family may walk in the door.

Make the most out of the small and big spaces you have and the people filling them.

Why drive when you can tuk or metro easily? Or use the family driver? FS kids often arrive to university not having a driver's license. What to do?

Shipping our kiddos off to university feels like a bit of a leap of faith, but it is what is supposed to happen, and it will all be fine. There are some stark differences between foreign service kids and those who graduated from stateside high schools amongst uni attendees. It isn't that one kind of high school experience prepares kids for university better or worse, but there are definite differences. Being prepared for these -- and preparing your kid for these -- will help manage expectations! These are just the differences I observed; I am sure there are many more. I'd love to hear some of your stories, too!

Next episode, I'll talk about one of the biggest differences: driver's license!

Fitness, nutrition and health are all concepts we sometimes understand, sometimes embrace and sometimes are confounded by. Join me for a conversation with 3 foreign service women who are "fit" and also looking for answers.

Long talk with 4 FS women about fitness, nutrition, stress relief, menopause, FS life and times zones.

Participants: Hillery Midkiff, Lisa Tilstra (of Make Life Less Difficult), Morgan Loosli, Susie Csorsz Brown

If you are a Foreign Service family, and you're about to send your kiddo off to university, you might have some questions about how that travel can happen, and if there are allowances that support that. As a matter of fact, there are! The allowances are not always easy to understand and are open to interpretation by your Finance and Management Officers, so be sure to have that conversation with them so you fully understand their interpretations.

Plan ahead, have your kiddo get their items ready, and let's prepare for a successful send-off to university!

Having the opportunity to take an R&R is phenomenal. Some destinations can be more rewarding and enjoyable than others, though. Here are 4 Women Talking (Morgan Loosli, Hillery Midkiff, Lisa Tilstra, and myself) sharing our top R&Rs destinations and briefly why (top 2 each) and suggestions to help make R&R or extended vacation actually enjoyable and relaxing.

Friends, no one likes packing out from their home. It's stressful, emotionally draining, and just tiresome. Some suggestions to make it maybe a little less awful, some funny (I think) pack-out stories, and hopefully some advice that will be useful to get through the process. And don't forget the best part about packing out: the tape ball war once the boxes are all stacked up and all that is left is empty space and the ends of the tape rolls!

What can we do for employment, to connect to our (new) community, to keep doing things that are meaningful? And yes, absolutely, parenting and contributions to home life are 100% meaningful but sometimes we want things outside the house, too, right? Join me for a conversation with Lelania Van de Berg, one of my favorite sweat session instructors, and we talk about what you can do outside of the "traditional" job options.