He came rattling up, driving a yellow plastic dump truck with a red bucket on the back and screeched to a stop on the sidewalk.  He looked over at me and said,  “AHA!!!!!”  He grinned wide, hopped off his truck and scooped a handful of dandelion heads (no stems)…

  This is how I felt last week regarding the passport application process.  Dr. Peds has planned a mini vacation to Voyageurs National Park in a few weeks.  He neglected to mention that we were going across the border into Canada for our accomodations on this mini vacation.  He thought…

Unlike his little brother, the super cautious kid who doesn’t like to do anything even remotely dangerous, THIS boy loves risky things, and even better, sharp tools.  Dr. Peds gave him an ax and a saw (shaped like a gun!) and told him he could tear apart some branches and…

The Banana had double front teeth on the bottom for several weeks, and finally a few days ago the baby tooth popped out, with a little traumatic help from the resident dad.  Not even 24 hours later, her wiggly top front tooth came out at school!  She was incredibly thrilled…

Mr. Trouble on Feet has been talking more and more, and it is so wonderful to finally hear about what goes on inside his little head.  Currently he signs about one third of what he wants to communicate and uses his voice to speak the other two thirds.  I have…

As expected, I had a busy week filled with evening rehearsals with the symphony as the Arrowhead Chorale joined with the DSSO chorus to sing Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis.  It was a crazy difficult piece, definitely the hardest thing I’ve ever prepared musically, and terrifying in many regards, but in the…

Guess who came to visit for the weekend!  We were so excited to have Auntie Dot and her family travel to our house.  The arrival of Cousin Alex and “Kuh Kuh Kuh Kuh!” was greatly anticipated by Mr. TOF.  He loves his cousins, and with good reason.  Altbough the visit…

This is the ONLY day all week long (including yesterday) that I don’t have a major rehearsal with the Arrowhead Chorale.  We are joining the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra Chorus and the orchestra itself, joined by a few people from the Minnesota Opera to sing Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis.  I hadn’t…

It’s been a really long time since I’ve written about what we’ve been reading!  Fear not, lots and lots of reading happens every day here.  I can’t keep up with YaYa and Mr. SP and all the silent reading that they do.  Sometimes I recommend books to them.  Sometimes they…

It’s the tiny plastic bike (actually, it’s supposed to be a motorcycle, I think) that doesn’t die!  We acquired it way back when we lived in that cute white house in Bismarck from a neighbor whose daughter had gotten too tall for it.  She had a new pedal bike that…