Susan Badeau

In August 2020, exactly 7 years after the publication of our book, "Are We There Yet? The Ultimate Road Trip Adopting and Raising 22 Kids"  my husband and I realized that the answer to that question continues to be "No, Not yet." So, inspired by the virtual realities of COVID life, we bought an RV and set off on the newest chapter of our life adventures. We have been living the #RVLIFE ever since. I had intended to blog from the road, but life happened along the way, o...

Today, as I post this, it is the day before the 2016 election. It has been an ugly season filled with hateful rhetoric. I want to take today to step back and look at how my deepest beliefs have shaped me and influenced the kind of person I have become as well as the decisions I make in the voting booth. I first penned this list in 2007, and updated it today to ensu...

Sharing this "cross-over" blog my publisher posted about our new book and inviting any of my blog readers to join us on Friday October 14th, 7-9 PM at the Big Blue Marble Bookstore in Philadelphia for a local launch and book signing. We will share stories, free sample coloring pages, wine, chocolate and good times. If you live far from Philly but would like us to come do an event in your area, please contact me!  Thanks 

We have returned from Kenya with full hearts and overflowing spirits. Thank you to every person who supported this trip through your donations, thoughts, prayers, and encouraging words.  Our team leader, David Ching, blogged each day of our trip and those blogs, with photos, are posted on the Imara website. Read on below for more about our amazing experience. Its a little long, but I hope you will enjoy it!  I will be post...

I’m a fan of mysteries.

And who doesn’t love a good Sherlock Holmes “whodunit?” So it wasn’t much of a stretch for me to become a fan of the television show “Elementary.”

Last night, I watched a new episode of Elementary.

This morning I read a powerful blog post by

Four Ways to Teach Gratitude to Children, part II

Teaching gratitude to children requires intentional effort on the part of parents. Part I of this blog offered two tips:

1. Model Thankfulness, and

2. Build Gratitude into family routines

Today, I continue with two more tips:

3. Practice delayed gratification – We all know the saying, &#...

November, the month when we gather with families and friends to eat turkey and pumpkin pie, is also known as the month of gratitude. In the social media age, it has become more and more common for people to use this month as an opportunity to post and share daily lists of all that they have to be thankful for in life.

Ironically, this spirit of overflowing gratitude is immediately followed by total immersion into a season of rampant consumerism characterized by an epidemic ...

We Didn’t Start the Fire (with apologies to Billy Joel)

Just before my mother was diagnosed with leukemia in 2004 she was on a vacation with her husband and came down with the famous “flu-like symptoms.” Thankfully, her doctors did not simply treat her for the flu but they dug deeper to find the true cause of her symptoms. Because of their persistence we had one year longer with my mother than we may otherwise have had.

Digging for...

 When I was in the sixth grade in my hometown of Barre, Vermont, my grandmother came to live with our family. My mom and dad both worked and it was my job to come home for lunch and check on “Mamie.” I’ll never forget the time I walked into the house to find her in the kitchen, tears in her eyes, jelly smeared everywhere and t...

As the new school year gets underway and children and parents are often going in many different directions, how do you balance building a shared family identity with nurturing each child’s uniqueness?

This exercise is a good place to start!

“If our family was a meal, the meal we would be is ______...