Our cover family had a lot of fun checking out turtles and other wildlife as we scouted locations on the beautiful Heifer International campus for their shoot. This sweet family has nothing but love for Little Rock and each other — and we loved hearing more about what they’ve been up to for the past few months.

What is your favorite Little Rock place to visit?

We love the Museum of Discovery and Target!

What is your kids’ favorite local restaurant? If you can leave the kids at home, what would you pick? 

Our kids can't get enough of El Porton and @ The Corner (we love you Leila!). We head to Kemuri for date night!

What is the most interesting way you’ve spent family time during quarantine? 

We moved into our new home at Pleasant Valley Country Club in February right before everything shut down, so we have been really enjoying taking our time and making it our own. 

We love the ecosystem of our land and enjoy visits from all kinds of creatures including birds, turtles, insects, lizards and chipmunks. We are growing our first fruit and vegetable garden and right as we were about to pick our first beautifully ripe red big beef tomato, our little friend Alvin the chipmunk got to it before we did!

What is the silliest thing your kids have fought about? How have sibling dynamics changed (for good or bad)? 

Having gone for almost 3 months without seeing any of their friends, our daughters have demonstrated by their compassion, positive attitude, and the way they love each other how truly blessed they feel to have one another. As their parents, we work hard at cultivating a nurturing and lifelong friendship between our children and it has been a gift to watch their relationship blossom through the pain and the joy. They love to see who can make the most birdies or catch the most fish when we are golfing or fishing with Daddy at the golf club!

How have you enjoyed “taking a pause”?

As a healthcare professional family and advocates for mental health, we have not taken much of a pause. On the contrary, we have accelerated our mission with Alleviant Health Centers to serve our community by restoring hope and bringing healing to so many of those who are suffering.

What's the first thing you'll do as a family when restrictions ease?

We hope to see our family in Texas! We miss them so much!

Have you had to cancel any trips or parties? 

Rose turned 5 on March 24 and we had to cancel “The Fanciest Birthday Par-Tea” that we poured our heart into planning for our little Fancy Nancy love. On Rose’s day, Daddy performed miracles as he so often does, and surprised her and her sisters with the most beautiful shiny new bicycles! We spent the day as a family at Two Rivers Park riding bicycles and having a birthday picnic with our sweet girls. It was the perfect way to celebrate while getting plenty of sunshine. It may not have been what we had originally planned, instead it was even better than we could have ever imagined!

How did you balance working from home and virtual school?

We have been homeschooling for over 3 years, so we were fortunate to feel prepared for many of the challenges that were rapidly presented during this uncertain time. Our Classical Conversations of Maumelle community is blessed with the most incredible director, Holly Bass. Holly has done an amazing job at leading our families in navigating our Zoom community days while also staying right on track for the end of the school year gearing up for back to school in the few coming weeks.

While most of our schooling did not get interrupted, all of the many activities that our children love and are involved in did. The change of not seeing any friends or going to gymnastics or the museum or the library like we have done so consistently for so long had the potential of affecting their emotional well-being as well. It has been really important to us to protect our mental, physical, and spiritual health and continue to raise our daughters in a loving and compassionate environment. After a few weeks of what felt like survival mode, we surrendered to our new rhythm and flow and found a new routine that has guided our curiosities and really helped us adjust and thrive. One of the focuses of our lifestyle is to invoke a love of lifelong learning in our children so this has given us many educational opportunities to challenge our minds even if only from our backyard. 

My loving and attentive husband invested in an elliptical for me to keep my endorphins flowing with daily morning exercise which has been life changing to be honest. We are all feeling so much right now and taking a few minutes each day to have my time with the Lord and pour into myself so that I can pour into my amazing husband and precious children from a full cup has made all of the difference.

What’s your biggest hope (and fear) for the coming school year?

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Romans 15:13

Our biggest hope for this coming school year is to be encouraged and continue to try to find joy amidst the sorrow, peace amidst the chaos and gratitude amidst the uncertainty.

The present really is a gift. I learned this with the birth of our darling daughters, then with the passing away of my precious mother in 2017 and again a week ago with the burial of my sweet grandmother. We found that having a creative outlet to help me see the beauty through the difficult times became a source of therapy for me, and that is how our lifestyle blog City of Hearts was born.

When fear dies, hope is born and in this rebirth, we pray for the healers, the leaders, the teachers and the people all over the world and for us all to have more compassion and more love than ever before!

Have you found any helpful language to talk to your kids about the pandemic?

We think it is very important to communicate openly and honestly with our children because they understand so much more than one might think. A book from the library about Florence Nightingale further sparked their interest in medicine last year so discussing this incredible woman and how she changed the world even beyond medicine has been not only educational, but very empowering to our three daughters. 

Our integrated approach explains the importance of hand washing and sneezing and coughing into our elbows from a young age, and we use visual learning with easy but very educational science experiments with sliced bread. We also highly focus on supporting and strengthening our immune system through playing out in the sunshine and getting plenty of Vitamin C, exercise, proper nutrition and lots and lots of giggles.