A Birthday Gift

You know I love Compassion International.
To me, the most powerful testimonies for why this program works is to hear from adults who were sponsored as a child, and what it meant to them. I recently read Peninah’s story; it’s so moving. Being involved with Compassion rescued her from a certain horrible future, as [...]

Out of the Mouths of Babes, Part 19

Luke, to Bennett, who’d just dropped half a banana on the floor: “Well quick pick it up! Three second rule!”
—–
I told Bennett that he was going to the fire station for a field trip with his preschool class. His response? “That is TOTALLY WICKED!” (He got that from “The Incredibles.”)
—-
Luke, explaining [...]

Trick or Treat! The 2009 Edition.

What a fun night! Halloween* has become one of the nights of the year I most look forward to with our kids…it’s just such a fun evening for all of us, and we get to enjoy it with neighbors and my family, too.
The night started off like this:
But it got much, much better.
We had [...]

Wordless Wednesday: First Chess Lesson

with thanks to Suzanne for the idea!

Pumpkins

One of the first posts I ever wrote on my blog was about how pumpkin carving started mysteriously falling under my responsibility. In my house growing up, my dad took care of this, so I assumed that Matt would be the one pulling guts out of pumpkins, but noooo. The last three years [...]

This is the Pits.

As of 15 minutes ago, there are now three of us with the flu in this house. In addition to Luke (Friday) and me (today), I noticed that Bennett was looking feverish right before bed. And sure enough, he was.
I started feeling really crummy this morning, and my cold symptoms quickly [...]

Because the Beginning of “Finding Nemo” Is Kinda Scary.

It’s a sick day here today…after feeling like we’d dodged a bullet when Bennett’s fever lasted less than 8 hours and produced no other symptoms (Tuesday night to Wednesday morning), Luke woke up at 5:45 today feeling warm and coughing a little. Not good.

Challenge, Revisited

Last fall, I wrote about Bennett and his sensory issues. If you haven’t read it and you have kids with sensory issues or are just interested in occupational therapy-type things, you might want to read that old post, which could have alternately been titled: “How I Nearly Lost My Mind, The Fall 2008 Edition.”
I [...]

Boys’ Christmas Ideas

My friend Suzanne recently blogged about having a hard time coming up with some ideas for her boys for Christmas. I feel like my older boys have given me a pretty good list to start with this year (family: if you want actual suggestions, please email me. I’ve already bought some of the [...]

Perspective

As I was telling Bennett about how, years ago, before kids, it used to be just Daddy and me in our apartment and then in our house, he said, “I bet you were like, ‘I wish we had some kids right now!’” A minute later, as we were still discussing this childlessness phenomenon that [...]