I am allowed Scotch Tape, and that is all. This is as a safety precaution, to protect me, so says my husband, my 4-year old and my 8-year old. They decided this amid howls of laughter, as my husband d...
Yesterday while driving back from a meeting, I heard Phillip Phillip’s song “Home” on the radio. I car-danced like crazy to that song at a stop light and couldn’t wait to get h...
We pulled out the book, “What Your 3rd Grader Needs to Know” again last night to work on some Math. Somehow, reading Narnia before bed has taken precedence in last week or so over Random E...
Last night I had a mini-meltdown over the topic of discussing war with my kids. Some great ideas came from visitors to the blog while I slept. This morning, I want to look at the whole idea from a com...
Is it ever too early to broach the subject of peace? After watching a WWI Flying Ace movie over the weekend, dinner conversation tonight drifted into the idea of immortality. We have talked about Lege...
Saturday Night we watched a movie with the boys called Flyboys, about American pilots flying for the French in WWI. It mostly focused on the flying, but there were moments that showed the devastation ...
Brothers, out in the country, with no one else around for miles, become best friends out of necessity. I think there is nothing more fun as a mother, than seeing my boys play together. They fight too....
My mind is a complete blank and that is a good thing. Normally, I am filled to the brim with lists of things to do, goals to accomplish, needs to be met, laundry to be folded, or animals to be fed and...
(Inspired by the first five paragraphs of Sven Birkerts’ essay on Emerson’s “The Poet” – A Circling, Poetry, April 2012) This, then, is why and how, and all the other i...
We are in the middle of a very busy season of our lives. Yesterday morning, I was canning before work, making cucumber relish. (I’ll share pictures at another time) We are canning or harvesting ...
Bean is our little Philosopher. He thinks deep thoughts, and says the most amazing things under his breath while speaking to himself. He also talks non-stop, out-loud. If you try to listen in or ask w...
Last night at dinner, we got into a very complicated discussion about a design/build issue with the down-hill go-cart that Ben, our 8-years old is currently planning. I say we, but it was actua...
No, I cannot hide emotion well. I am a poet, for Pete’s Sake. I feel everything deeply, I express what I feel in words or with tears, or with a face that says it all. I am easily read by those a...
Over dinner the other night, Ben, our 8-year old, explained that this phrase was how Koko, the signing gorilla, described a Birthday Party. Ben is fascinated by gorillas, and this one in particular, a...
What is fun about trying to enhance the educational process for my kids, without a real agenda, is that things tend to unfold based on what we talk about over dinner. Tonight, we got into a discussion...
We live in the country, we let our egg laying chickens free range, we grow our own food, and this year we are learning about canning, putting away all sorts of things for eating later this winter. My ...
Saturday night, we went to the Drag Strip that is within earshot of our home. During the summer months, the racetrack noises are our soundtrack. We are out gardening, and hearing race noise. We are ba...
After Benjamin had a mathematical breakthrough this week, suddenly, he is completely consumed with math and the beauty of it, the problem solving, art, design, functionality and pure joy of it. This g...
This is not the scene from SYTYCD – it was just the best semi-related picture I could find! It has been a long week. One thing I love about when the days start getting shorter, and the kids aren...
Over dinner we got into a big discussion of not judging a book by its cover. We talked about the people we met at the Art Gallery, who were disabled, and how some people would look at them and think ...
Tonight was a gift, pure and simple. It was an Art & Poetry night, and I had big plans for both the boys with new books to share with each of them. But first, Ben needed to get his Math homework d...
This was originally published in the Valley Voices section of the Fresno Bee on October 20, 2001. It was written several years before that. It seems like a lifetime ago that these dark sounds c...
We started talking about Onomatopoeia’s at the dinner table. The kids thought the word was hysterical, and Scott started talking about the old Batman & Robin television shows that would alwa...
Well, Hello
