Kathryn Sansone shares her insight and advice about making a marriage strong, raising kids and taking care of yourself.

"While I never forget that I am my children's mother and my husband's wife, I know that I must always remain connected to me, to who I am as a woman."

• Reaffirm who you are each morning when you wake up by acknowledging your strengths.

• Pay attention to your body's signals, your mind's signals, and the signals of those around you.

• Keep up with beauty basics. If you look good, you'll feel great, and that pleasure principle will make you shine—inside and out.

• Create a place for the important things. An easy way to increase harmony and reduce chaos in your daily life is to create a place for your keys, purse, mail, bills, and appointment book or Palm Pilot.

"One of the best compliments my husband, Jim, and I ever receive is when people say, 'Are you newlyweds?' What makes our marriage work so well is the deep, abiding care each of us takes for the other and for our relationship as a whole."

• The best gift you can give your children is a loving relationship with your spouse.

• Take time to reconnect with your husband. … Talk to your kids about how important it is that parents have alone time. Explain that this doesn't mean they are less important, but rather that a family's strength comes from the parents having a solid relationship.

• I delight in giving Jim a compliment in front of others. I can watch his heart grow right before me.

• Communicating with each other requires delicacy, patience, and work. Yet the payoff is huge. … A relationship without a nag is a relationship in which both people stand on equal footing.

• Stay connected when a baby arrives. The stress of caring for a newborn cannot be minimized, but it can be exacerbated if you don't stay connected to your spouse.

"The best parents can do is to offer their children love, a safe home, guidance, faith, and the opportunities to learn about themselves and the world they live in."

• Expect kids to pitch in. Our kids know that we expect them to stick up for their siblings and to help one another.

• Show your children you love them. We love to tell our kids we love them, but there are many other ways to show your kids your love them. Jim calls the kids nicknames related to their successes.

• Don’t do their homework. Homework is kids' work. There is no excuse for either doing your children's homework or letting them not do it. When the kids are doing their homework, I try to make the experience as fun and comfortable as possible. I want them to associate homework with good feelings.

• The daily purge: After we return home at the end of each day, the kids empty the car of all their belongings and any garbage. As soon as they walk in the door, they go through their backpacks. … That helps reduce clutter, garbage accumulation, and the tendency for lost articles of clothing, equipment, or schoolbooks.

• Say "no" creatively. Try beginning, "Yes, you may, but after you clean your room."

• Set up a healthy food attitude. … By organizing meals for the week ahead of time, I save myself a lot of aggravation. I write a list of the dishes my children love, those they'll tolerate, and the one I want them to eat. Then I devise a simple plan that involves one or two from each category.

• Create family time each day.

Excerpted from 'Woman First, Family Always' by Kathryn Sansone (Meredith Books; 2006)