Super Rachel Zana's Spot

This week he’s been busy constructing with unit blocks and plastic Hot Wheels track that has been floating around our house for years and years.  There’s a big basket of cars, and he tests each track to see which cars work the best for every configuration he creates.  Whenever my…

This morning the historic sanctuary of a church in my city burned.  It wasn’t my church, but it was a church that I have sung in many times, a church where my choir has rehearsed and performed, and it was an exceptionally beautiful sanctuary, my favorite of all the churches…

In the winter you can spot many feet in my city clad in mukluks.  Mukluks are made in Ely, MN, about an hour away.  (Ely is the same place Wintergreen outerwear is made, and my Wintergreen winter coat has been my best friend for 8 winters now.  I plan on wearing…

We’ve been eating a lot of clementines.  Then Mr. Trouble on Feet got a bit obsessed with Sara Pennypacker’s Clementine books.  We downloaded a number of the Clementine audio books from our library for him to listen to during afternoon rest while I’m teaching.  All that talk of clementines somehow got mixed…

It was Crazy Hair Night at AWANA.  These two were pretty creative.  The Banana actually had three pony tails:  one on the top of her head, one in the back of her head, and one that formed a beard.  Mr. TOF asked me to put as many pony tails as…

Last weekend I gathered with more than a hundred other women in my city, and literally probably a million women all over the world from all kinds of different Christian churches to worship together and learn together and fellowship together as part of If Gathering.  This is the third If…

I’ve been playing my cello for one year!  Honestly, sometimes it feels like my progress is disgustingly slow, but when I frame what I now can play in light of the fact that a year ago I didn’t even know how to hold the cello, I really have learned a…

The weather was remarkably warm on Sunday, which turned the snow into the perfect sculpting medium.  In the early afternoon our neighbors halfway down the street popped over and snow construction commenced.  Many hands make for light work, and they had the assembly line down pat.   Mr. SP elected…

I learned the Russian words for please, thank you, car, store, yes, no, sister, brother, hello, tea, penguin, bus, airplane, shower, and some others too. I learned how DIFFICULT it is to pronounce things in Russian. It turns out I like borscht, even though I hate most of the ingredients that…

He asked me, “Mama, are there a lot of cranes in Ukraine?”