When I was in third grade, we learned about North Dakota in our social studies class. One of my favorite days of third grade was the day when our teacher gave us each a cardboard piece cut in the shape of North Dakota and a big bowl of salt dough.…

The applesauce is made! We were blessed with three totes of apples from a friend’s apple tree along with a couple of bags of apples from other friends and neighbors, which made for a lot of applesauce! Over the past two weekends I spent many hours cooking and straining apples,…

Yesterday I saw a post on social media from a mom I know from church. Her daughter had a school assignment that asked her to write the four phrases she heard most in her house, and the daughter wrote lovely things like, “I love you; I’m proud of you; please…

When it snowed a couple of weeks ago before we had even had a frost, I groaned, thinking for sure that all the leaves on the trees would not even get a chance to turn before they shriveled up brown and dropped to the soggy ground. But strangely enough, even…

Currently the family room is covered in Legos. Over the weekend these two kidlets started building castles, houses, and Lego scenes of every kind. The Banana joined in now and then as well. There are Legos on blankets, Legos on the activity table, Legos under the couch, on the couch,…

Ahhh. A toasty fire. A peaceful harp. It all makes for a nice day in the living room.

The Banana has been waiting a decade for pierced ears. When she was a tiny little girl, Grandma Kathy suggested that she could come to celebrate The Banana’s thirteenth birthday and they would get her ears pierced. The Banana has been highly anticipating her thirteenth birthday ever since. A few…

A week ago on Saturday, the kidlets and I found ourselves in Moorhead, Minnesota with time to spend. We drove to Moorhead to take YaYa to participate in Double Reed Day at Concordia College, and we needed to find things to do to occupy the day. The options were a…

While I was out walking in the neighborhood over the past few weeks, I noticed a couple of new little libraries! One was just around the corner tucked into a street I normally don’t walk down, and another beautiful big library house appeared on a street I walk down all…