The child who NEVER likes his picture taken actually ran in and asked me to get out my camera, take this picture and put it on my blog so that Grandpa Ron and Papa Richard could see it.  He's making his VERY special cowboy face, because, as he put it,…

We opened a box that hadn't been opened for a long time, and inside was a children's picture book that one of my favorite classes from my days of being an English teacher had given Sarah for a baby gift when she was born.  They all signed the front cover.…

This is the second grade version of me, competing in the clothespin drop contest at playday.  The object of this contest was to stand on the chair and drop clothespins into a jar that you can barely see in the bottom of the picture.   When Sarah saw this picture,…

Although I love winter, and I'm not even all that terribly tired of it yet, this week, yet another week of extremely cold temperatures and a lot of staying inside, has made me crave green foilage a little bit. Aren't house plants nice? Mine would be even nicer if I…

It was a festive morning at Mr. Sneaky Pant's preschool today.  The Banana and I attended a parade, where three long dragons wound themselves around the room.  The dragon heads were boxes painted by the students, and behind each dragon head tromped many dragon feet under a long piece of…

Today, in the car on the way home from preschool: Mr. Sneaky Pants:  Did you know Mrs. Lindgren has those things on her teeth? Those bracelets?  And she can't ever take them off until summer time.  That's a long time from now.  She has to eat her cheese stick very…

The entire St. Olaf choir concert was breathtakingly beautiful, but there were a group of three pieces by the barely-older-than-me composer Eric Whitacre that have stayed with me for the past few days.  It would be safe to say that I am seriously hooked on music by Eric Whitacre now.…

On Saturday evening Greg and I zipped down the hill to attend the live broadcast of Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion.  To say we were excited about this would be a major understatement.  We had been wanting to get tickets to A Prairie Home Companion since before we were even…

Inspired by the new windows in my office, Dr. Peds and I decided to do a little rearranging with the writing/art space for the kidlets.  We moved out our old kitchen table that served as the writing table, and Dr. Peds found a more narrow table that fit against the…

Last week during our cold snap, my cozy indoor life was interupted by a phone call from a desperate mom whose son attends preschool with Mr. Sneaky Pants. Her little boy was having a birthday party on Saturday, and was convinced that Noah would be attending.  Could he come?  I…