7th Gen Blog

Congratulations, dear Kate! You're about to marry that handsome Prince William bloke and become an honest-to-goodness princess. That's jolly good, but I should warn you that becoming royalty has a serious downside. Instead of a tidy London flat, you and the groom will soon have an entire castle to clean.

Buckingham Palace has 775 rooms, including 78 bathrooms. Windsor Castle has 1,000 rooms and is over 900 years old. Imagine dust bunnies that are centuries old!

These days, too many of our friends and neighbors have too little. This is especially true where struggling families are concerned. It costs about $11,000 a year to raise a child, but one in four families earn less than that. So we came up with a quick and simple way for all of us to help these moms and dads using nothing more than our cell phones.

When I was a young girl I didn't dare talk to anyone about the changes my body was going through. I find it fascinating that one generation later my 13-year-old daughter can laugh, giggle, and even have a serious discussion about her body.

I remember a game we played at our wedding reception almost nine years ago -- the shoe game. My new husband and I sat back to back and each of us traded a shoe to the other. Then the DJ asked questions about the two of us and we were to answer by raising the appropriate shoe. I was the ballet slipper and my husband was the shiny black shoe. Everyone laughed at how in (or out of) synch we were. There was a series of questions about household duties and who was responsible...the ballet slipper went up an awful lot: "Who pays the bills?" Slipper. "Who does the dishes?" Slipper.