Super Rachel Zana's Spot

Each Friday morning for the past few weeks Mr. TOF and I have headed off to a nature-based preschool that invited us to come and teach a music class.  The class meets at the teacher’s home and incorporates some really fun concepts.  For example, there is a pet rabbit that…

Today was Mr. TOF’s last day of preschool for the year.  He has loved preschool, really loved it. Every single day he was excited to hop in the car and drive down the hill to school, and he’s grown in confidence so much in the last few months. Each day…

Mr. Sneaky Pants was in kindergarten or first grade when he discovered Garfield and Calvin and Hobbes and fell in love with comics.  He reads voraciously, thick novels swallowed all at once, but he loves a good comic strip to clear out his brain every once in awhile.  Grandma Kathy always…

This is the first weekend in many that I am able to spend at home with hardly anything on the schedule.  I cannot tell you how excited I am about this fact.   Our forsythia bushes that we planted last summer are in full bloom, and I love the branches…

Last weekend we packed everyone up and headed to Minneapolis for the state Minnesota History Day competition.  YaYa’s website qualified for the state level a few months ago. Dr. Peds was the driver extraordinaire who got us there and back safely, and then took the rest of the kidlets off…

Cousin Katherine came creeping down the stairs late at night to ask for braids in her hair.  Who could resist that sweet please? I pretty much love these pictures.  

I came into the house the evening the cousins arrived.  “By the way,” Auntie Dot remarked, “you might want to wash your electric toothbrush.”  That’s a weird suggestion, I thought.  Then she explained that shortly before Cousin Katherine came scooting through at a gallop, exclaiming “It tickles!  It tickles!” Sure…

I was reading the news the other morning and randomly, completely randomly, discovered that an article about a girl in Wausau who nailed a perfect score on the ACT was really a story about one of my favorite and most brilliant piano students ever, a little girl I loved teaching…

We were thrilled that the cousins, their parents, and Grandma Kathy came to spend the weekend with us!  It was a weekend jam packed  because the missions conference was taking place at church, Arrowhead Chorale rehearsals were proceeding as usual, Dr. Peds had to work one night,  and YaYa had…