I'm just trying to walk myself home.
We took a morning to hike and bike the Snodgrass Trail in Crested Butte, Colorado on our summer vacation. Taido has wanted us to do this trail for a while, but it’s a fairly strenuous single track trail for our young mountain bikers, so we’ve put it off in the past. This year we decided …
In honor of my daddy’s birthday today, I thought I would share this sweet little picture that Simon brought home from school. It’s his favorite summer memory. Riding a motorcycle with Grandpapa. My dad has this off-roading motorcycle that he rides when we are camping. He can be gone for hours on it and you …
Oh Be Joyful. That’s the name of the valley we camped in near Crested Butte, Colorado. We’ve camped here several times before, so it was all shouts of joy in the van when we decided to return there for the last leg of our summer vacation. My parents met us there and the kids …
I borrowed Lauren Winner’s new book, Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis, at the beginning of the summer from a friend. And I still haven’t returned it. It’s one of those books that you can read in one sitting if you don’t stop yourself, so after I read about half of it, I sort of …
After a couple of busy days in which we were all running different directions, we decided to spend Saturday evening together as a family. Everyone wanted to watch a movie, but Taido and I decided we all needed to get out of the house. The summer heat has given us a little relief the last …
Black Bean Confetti I am crazy for all the ingredients in this Tex-Mex bowl of yumminess. Also, all the colors make me happy. Every once in a while my friend Rhonda and I cater an event for someone. Mostly we do it because we love cooking together so much. We recently made two huge bowls …
What to Wear to Dinner on a Cruise One of my favorite parts of our girl cruise last year was dressing up for dinner. At first I wondered what to wear to dinner on a cruise, but then we planned it all way ahead of time at our cruise meetings. Also, I should mention that …
Today my only girl is 13. She has grown up so much in the last year, and yet I still have so much I want her to know. I want her to dream bigger-than-life dreams but I want her to stay close to me. I am alternately bursting with pride in the young woman she …
While we spent most of our Utah time in Arches National Park, we took one day to see a portion of Canyonlands National Park. I say a portion, because Canyonlands is a huge National Park. The canyons in the middle of the park make it impossible to cross to the other side, so in order …
I picked up Teach Like Your Hair’s on Fire by Rafe Esquith about his years of teaching in a rough Los Angeles neighborhood because I am always intrigued by stories about teachers who are able to have success in schools where the odds are against them. Some of my favorite movies have a similar storyline. …
One of the reasons I was remembering my friend Laura yesterday is that our families met up this summer in Utah at Arches National Park! We did this one other time when we were traveling in the Pacific Northwest in 2008 (we like to call that summer Living the Dream). It’s so much fun. Our …
I was new in town, living on the south side of Seattle. Renton, to be exact. We had lived less than a year in a relatively uninspiring mint green townhouse. I was new to motherhood, new to staying at home, new to leaving the house with everything but the kitchen sink. I hadn’t really met …
Here’s an easy treat we made in honor of the Olympics this week! Patriotic Pretzels! We dipped pretzels in melted almond bark and then Simon sprinkled them. They harden in about 20 minutes on parchment paper. Then you can scoop them up and serve them in a bowl. So easy! And we decided they almost …
My sweet Aunt Jeanne gave my kids the children’s version of the wildly popular Jesus Calling for Christmas this year. Since school started, we’ve been using this devotion book in the mornings to connect for a minute with God and each other before we all run off in different directions. My mom uses this devotional …
In the summertime, I love iced coffee every day. Sometimes I pour myself a hot cup of coffee and I cannot even finish it before I am starting to sweat, so I just go on and ice it first thing in the morning. Those are the kind of days we’re having in Arkansas right now. …
While Taido was out of town last week, Mary Polly had a couple of girls spend the night. Usually our house is full of boys, so it’s always interesting when the hormone scale gets tipped the other way. The dynamics in the house shift. Nail polish fumes overpower the smell of sweaty socks. One Direction …
Colorado Wildflowers Mary Polly took a lot of pictures on our trip to Colorado this year. In fact, everyone took a few pictures of their own and it is fun as I go through them to see our adventures from different eyes. The boys take lots of pictures of rocks and sticks. Mary Polly took …
Every year I give the kids a new book on the first day of summer. I picked The Great Wide Sea by M. H. Herlong out for Ben because in addition to the appealing cover and exciting storyline, the main character’s name is Ben. He read it the first day of summer, handed it to …
This is the fifth in a series of posts about a super fun birthday cruise that was planned by my friends, Sarabeth and Rhonda. Read the the other parts here: part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4. The Story of 12 Women Who Went on a Cruise, Part 5: Cruise Karaoke One of …
So as I’ve been going through pictures, I realized I never put up all the pictures from our trip to Colorado last summer. I even had the ones for the blog all picked out and in a folder. I know what happened. Every year, when our time is up in the Rockies, I drive home …