Life isn't tied with a bow, but it's still a gift.

It takes tough love to order kids to step away from the iPhone or iPad during dinner or to take the devices away if they're interrupting and interfering with everyone else's pleasure at a movie, concert or other public event.

Frame every so-called disaster with these words: In five years, will this matter?

The secret to success, to parenting, to life, is to not count up the cost. Don't focus on all the steps it will take. Don't stare into the abyss at the giant leap it will take. That view will keep you from taking the next small step.

There were two kinds of women: those who wear nail polish and those who don't. Which do you prefer?

We need to be smarter than our smart phones and realize the people we are with are more important than the people we aren't with, and way more important than the strangers we hope will tweet and like and share and Instagram whatever we're sending out into the cybersphere.

Pope Francis is not only changing the face of the Catholic Church, he's challenging us to be the face of God in the world by seeing the face of God in the person we least expect to see it, including the person in the mirror.