Mother’s Day isn’t a holiday that we often mark with huge fanfare or extraordinary plans, mostly due to the fact that the adults in this family are both mothers and our idea of a great day involves more relaxing and less planning for someone else. That said, motherhood is a deeply important part of my identity; probably the most important part, so I do a lot of reflecting this time of year on how grateful I am to be living this life. Continue reading
Life lately
I should warn you now that this is going to be a meandering post about many unconnected things with no neat wrap up to bind them all together. I apologize in advance. But it’s the first nice day we’ve had in ages (it’s been like All Summer in a Day around here lately), and I’m at home alone with a glass of wine and the sound of lawnmowers is buzzing through the open windows and I bought plants today and tomorrow I’m going to plant them, and I’m happy about that. Continue reading
Everyday magic
Easter weekend arrived and it feels like spring is finally here. Saturday was full of all kinds of beauty, most of which I didn’t photograph. We started the day with Jonah and I heading off to an Earth Day 5K at the Nature Center. We did it in celebration of his accomplishment of having completed a ten minute run in gym class. I knew that we would likely walk most of it, and we walked nearly all of it, but to my surprise he never complained and actually told me how much fun he was having more than once.
We stopped by the neighborhood hardware store on the way back home and they gave Jonah a cheap plastic kite. He was thrilled and wanted to try it out immediately, so I warned him that sometimes cheap plastic kites don’t work all that well and don’t last a terribly long time, but we walked over to the schoolyard to give it a try. Despite my skepticism, it actually flew quite well and he was over the moon. It was so much fun watching him run back and forth with it (which honestly amazed me after a 5K). Continue reading
Charleston Spring Break 2019
When Kristin dropped off a large bunch of bananas to our next door neighbor just before we loaded up the car to to leave for Charleston, Colleen told Kristin that she recalled someone saying that we would never attempt that drive again after the first time. “I think that may have been the same person who bought way too many bananas before leaving for a road trip. I wouldn’t trust her.” Kristin replied with a wink.
On ghost ships and the foreclosure of possibilities or Who do you want to be when you grow up?
Last weekend we attended the 40th birthday celebration of my college roommate, a woman I’m incredibly thankful to have had in my life during some very formative times. It was a pretty good sized event (maybe seventy people or so) which was a significant contrast to the intimate dinner with friends I’d chosen to celebrate my own milestone birthday. The next morning we had breakfast with some friends who had been at the same party, and the conversation quickly led to their ages (39 this year) and what they each hoped to do for their own milestone celebration. Continue reading
Raising a runner
I’ve never been a runner. I played a lot of sports growing up, mostly with an overwhelming lack of enthusiasm, and the one through-line is that I hated running of all kinds. I can remember the side aches, meandering my way through the one mile “run” in middle school gym class, dreading running as a punishment during every sports practice. Once I was in college I eventually decided to try to get in good enough shape to run a 5K, and I did, and that was enough for me. I’m someone who goes to the gym and does cardio but long stretches of running have never factored in heavily. Continue reading
Snapshots from a ski trip
Last Friday Jonah had the day off from school while no one else did. A friend of ours told me recently that she’d taken her daughter, also in kindergarten, skiing for the first time. “She loved it!” she said of her daughter. “You have to take him!”
I grew up skiing and have so many happy memories of those times. My dad took me for the first time when I was seven or so, just he and I. While I don’t remember learning, I vaguely remember coming home and falling asleep on our brown velvet couch after a long day out in the snow. In the years that followed we went up north and to Colorado on ski trips as a family or with our next door neighbors who had girls the same age as my sister and I. I can picture moments like snapshots of the places we stayed, some nice and some less so, the various colors of chairlifts, runs that twisted through the woods and the places we would veer just off of the run to weave through the trees. In middle school my happiest memories are from ski club, winter weeknights when my mom would pack up and drop off all of my ski gear, always packing a Hershey’s Cookies and Mint candy bar in my bag. We’d stay after school until the bus took us way out to the ski hills where they would let us loose with the responsibility to return by 9:00 p.m. before the bus left to bring us back. It left me with a thrilling sense of maturity and trust. Continue reading
The twins turn four
As I typed the title to this post I paused for a moment and wondered when (assuming it’s inevitable) Jude and Vivienne will object to being referred to as a collective noun. They have such an incredible bond; both would quickly name the other as best friend. I hope that they’re always that way. Continue reading
Easy DIY photo strip valentines
Valentine’s Day has never made my list of favorite holidays, but since having kids it feels like an excellent excuse for thematic crafting. For the past couple of years I’ve picked up some pre-cut hearts and loads of stickers and sequins and markers and let the kids go to town and drop whatever chaos they ended up creating into their classmates’ paper-bag mailboxes. This year the holiday coincided with an irrepressible urge to take on a creative project, so I decided to co-opt their valentines entirely. Continue reading
Late January winter chaos
The last two weeks have brought some of the most extreme winter weather Kalamazoo has seen in a very long time. Of the last ten school days, eight have been snow/cold/ice days. It was thrilling at first: wondering the night before if school would be called off (it’s worth noting that this is easier for us because when they call school Kristin is at home to watch the kids), waking throughout the night to peek outside and revise your guess for the morning. We had so little snow in December and early January that I was really hoping we’d get enough for some serious sledding, but this was more than I’d anticipated. Continue reading
