Shuttles


Life around home

We started it as an energy-burning game for my hyperactive second-born son. Run up the flight of eighteen stairs… Tag the wall… Run back down… And tag the couch… Four times. Now see how fast you can do it. Motion? Speed? Noise? Ticking timer? Oh my. He loved it. And then his brother had to […]

May 2, 2016

Stoplight system for the road


Life around home, Out and about

Speaking of children… Probably yours are always well-behaved. Probably yours never squabble over dinner, or while doing chores, or (my personal favorite) in the backseat of the van on the way to church? Probably you just say “Love one another, dears” and they drop their quarrels? I thought so. But mine are human, and riding […]

January 28, 2015

Seven homemade gifts for Christmas


Celebrations

Oh me, oh my! Our homemade gift exchange brought out some delightful creativity in the family. We had homemade log cabins and furnished doll houses for little girls, wood-framed Lego baseplates for boys, gift baskets of treats, personalized T-shirts, denim blankets, wooden shelves, pretty scarves, knitted slippers, and more… Here are a few our little […]

November 15, 2014

Two experiments


Life around home

Confession: I’ve been meaning to organize the closets and corners of my house for weeks and weeks now. I kept scheduling it in my planner and it kept getting bumped. This couldn’t possibly be my fault… surely someone else is to blame? With the holidays approaching and a schedule that is unrelenting, I decided to […]

November 7, 2014

The house of tomorrow


Foster care

I always say that Ryan is the one who had fostering in his blood, not me. But tonight I remembered a poem I loved before I was married. I used to sing it to myself, because it got inside my heart and tugged. Maybe it was a premonition. I never thought so then. Foster Baby […]

October 11, 2014

The mayhem and the macabre


Life around home

We had a lot of drama this summer. You wouldn’t think it, since the walls are still standing and the sunlight is slanting gently down on the goats’ pen. But we did, in our small way. Once in our yard we found an unfortunate starling—as Dickens would say, dead as a doornail. We trust he […]

September 25, 2014