Par for the course, we dragged Grandma Kathy around to all sorts of places while she was here: to the  rocky beach, Little Sand Bay on the South Shore, to the raspberry farm, out to eat, and up the North Shore to do some hiking at Tettagouche State Park.  You…

It’s one of my favorite beaches, the mouth of the Kadunce River.  Red stones stretch in a wide arc, and the forest glints ahead of the setting sun.  We don’t get there often, but I always feel peaceful when we do.  There was a bit of paddle boarding, a lot…

  Before the biggest kidlets came back from North Dakota, we took an overnight trip to Grand Marais with Mr. Trouble on Feet and The Banana.  Everyone was buckled into their seats and we were driving along.  We passed a rather large cemetery. The Banana:  Oh look!  It’s a wedding!…

This morning before Grandma Kathy left for North Dakota, we went to breakfast at one of our favorite breakfast restaurants.  Within the time span of five minutes, three glasses of water were spilled.

Breakfast in the bathtub (muffins!) started out a little bit rough, with some squabbling about who would sit where and when and I’m not sure what else.  The Banana was not happy, even though people offered to make room for her.  Eventually with a bit of persuading she did join…

A week ago I went down to the clinic for my regular monthly OB checkup.  During a hastily scheduled ultrasound, it became very apparent that our baby had no heartbeat.  The ultrasound looked nothing at all like the two perfect ones I’d had at checkups the two months previous.  Our…

Our next door neighbors are also from North Dakota, which is a terrific thing.  Their youngest child just graduated, and they are on the precipice of becoming empty nesters.  Yesterday afternoon, I looked out my kitchen window and saw the two of them relaxing on their hammock in their gorgeous…

Around here, the best part of the Fourth of July is undeniably the kid parade in the middle of the morning, a haphazard, slightly chaotic mass exodus of kids, parents and families up and down our street, cheered on by elderly neighbors in the area who don’t have kids or…

He was so overjoyed when Dr. Peds opened the door to the front seat and let him climb up into the beloved old red Honda (what a great car!).  There was driving to be done!  And buttons to push and push and push.  Getting back out was not so exciting.…

The Banana, my girl who needs to be around people and doing things all the time, is going a bit crazy since there are no kidlets bigger than she to entertain her for large swaths of the day, and no school to break things up.  Even though we’ve done a…