About Us

Free State Family is a website for and about parents produced in Lawrence, Kansas. Although we have plenty of opinions, the Free State Family editorial staff is not a booster of any particular brand of parenting and hopes that parents from all walks of life will find the site useful and entertaining.

Free State Family is the brainchild of Liz Weslander (pictured here on assignment). Liz is a mother of twins who counts finding "family friendly" destinations that don't involve eating crappy pizza while her kids stare at cartoons as one of her hobbies. This site was born out of that hobby, as well as Liz's belief that good parenting periodicals are hard to find.

You can learn more about Liz by reading her blog on this site Gin and Juice Boxes. The archives of her previous blog Got Kids? are also rather telling.

Chicken Herding author, Rachel Myslivy, lives in Lawrence with her husband, Wade, and daughters, Sage and Willa, an epileptic dog, a tail-less cat, two finches, her four darling hens, plus the new batch of 7 little girl hens and a rooster (whose days are numbered). She is a full-time mom, and a part-time quilter, knitter, baker and gardener. She does bookkeeping to pay the bills.

Rachel is an interminable busy body who is always looking to find just one more thing to add to her already overflowing plate of things to do. She is generally friendly, but tends to over analyze every damn thing she says or does and doesn't really mingle well as a result. Rachel sees herself as being much like her beloved chickens: a little funny-looking, skittish, sketchy as hell and prone to run off squawking in a flurry of feathers. In spite of all those things, she is actually very loyal, loving and thoughtful
at heart.

Circle Up author, Megan Helm, hails from St. Louis, Missouri where she grew up singing and dancing. After educational stints at Carnegie-Mellon University and the Oberlin Conservatory Megan found herself at the University of Kansas where she drank a lot of beer and was Baby Jay for a year. Eventually she cobbled together enough credits to graduate with a degree in U.S. Social History. After years of tedium in the rat race, Megan realized that all she ever really wanted to do was sing and dance. (cut to Megan, spinning, arms outstretched on a hill with guitar. Orchestral music swells in the background) She climbed back up Mt. Oread and finished her BME Music Education in 1999.

Megan offers music and movement classes to preschools and hosts the Friday Night Family Music Jam, a monthly event filled with parents and kids of all ages playing instruments, singing and having a good time. She teaches the Imagine That curriculum at the Music Clubhouse, where she is a licensed Kindermusik instructor and independent consultant for Do-Re-Me and You! Megan loves to write and brainstorm crazy ideas and is honored to be blogging for Free State Family.com.

More information about Megan is available at wonderchildmusic.com