Here in Northern Minnesota, late August seems to often bring a sequence of beautiful days with perfect temperatures, and the past few years I have noticed that I really enjoy the tall, late blooming flowers in the forest and all around the neighborhood. I’m soaking up the green, soaking up…

She goes for a run most evenings, and her bracelets go with her.

So, I’ve gotten pretty behind in sharing images from our Sunday Night at the Beach excursions, but rest assured, we have made it to the beach every single Sunday night all summer long! Sometimes I think we won’t actually make it, but the exuberant value of pausing whatever needs to…

We had a great week! This girl loves to make things, so our week (and house) was filled with projects using beads, buttons, glue, string, markers, paint, ink, scissors, chalk . . . everything! She built fantastic marble runs with Mr. Trouble on Feet, played board games, and created wonderful…

The Names they Gave Us by Emery Lord. This is probably the best Young Adult novel that I’ve read this year. The topics are handled with such grace and nuanced, and it is so rare to find a protagonist in a young adult novel that subscribes to the Christian religion.…

A few days ago we started a little project: taking art supplies to a destination and creating art inspired by what we saw when we got there. We’re pretty excited about the idea. Our first trip was to Chester Bowl, where we plunked ourselves down on a picnic table. The…

We have had a lot of warm weather this summer, and I have particularly been enjoying fruit smoothies on extra hot and muggy afternoons. There’s something refreshing about sitting and slurping a cold, red smoothie through a stainless steel straw. A few months ago, near the start of the lockdown,…

It seemed like he was asking which was his more photogenic side. Seagulls are irritating to a lot of people (such as Dr. Peds), but I get quite a kick out of their humorous, crafty shenanigans.

YaYa drove back home with me after the cabin weekend, but the other kidlets headed the opposite direction to spend a few days with Auntie Dot and the cousins. Auntie Dot delivered them back driving a borrowed 15 passenger van (7 kids didn’t fit in her vehicle) with broken air…

After seeing the strangest caterpillar frozen on a vine leaf outside my office window with little white bumps growing out of its skin, I did a little research and learned all about parasitic wasps who insert their eggs inside butterfly eggs. The larvae remain dormant inside the caterpillar until the…