Food can be a crazy thing, but we have been blessed with host children who are not picky eaters, and actually are excited to try new things.  It probably helps that a lot of our food around here is quite plain, and not too different from the food that they…

When we were preparing for our very first host child a year and a half ago, everyone in our family was very apprehensive about how we would communicate with a little girl who only spoke Russian.  My neighbor who had more hosting and international adoption experience was there to encourage…

It’s no secret that around here we love Mo Willems’ Elephant and Piggie books.  In fact, at this point, I think we own every single Elephant and Piggie book that is in existence, along with the new books by other authors that are “friends” of Elephant and Piggie.  Even my…

The girls we hosted from Latvia during December last winter are coming back to spend five weeks with us this summer!  They are set to arrive next week, and we are very much anticipating their arrival. Their situation is very complicated, and there are many complex parts that I just…

  While Cousin Alex was visiting for Camp Aunt Rachel, we visited the sandy beach and brought along YaYa’s friend, an exchange student from Austria.  (A very patient and polite exchange student who clearly can put up with a lot of crazy!). The girls were off for a stroll along…

A week ago, when I picked up Cousin Alex from the cabin, we got back to Duluth a bit after the sun had set.   But I was determined to go to the beach anyway, so we stopped on our way back to the house.  We arrived at the beach…

On Sunday we drove to the cabin to pick up Cousin Alex and bring him to our house for Camp Aunt Rachel, a weeklong extravaganza.  We dropped off The Banana, who went back to North Dakota to help Auntie Dot with the little ones for the week.  We had a…

Mr. Trouble on Feet is so very excited to be playing baseball.  He loves baseball practice.  He loves baseball games.  He spends all his spare time in the yard throwing balls and catching them, and trying to run around the bases he’s set up in the yard as fast as…

  YaYa’s very good friend from music camp happens to live in Wisconsin (which is pretty crazy since music camp is on the International Border  of North Dakota).  Her family happened to be up the North Shore of Lake Superior for the weekend for a family trip, and on the…

She’s one quirky girl, and makes me laugh almost every single day. It takes a special kid to look over at her parents who are having a wee bit of a tiff about the correct procedure to fold up the sun umbrella on the deck and sing so sweetly and…