Super Rachel Zana's Spot

We were in North Dakota over the weekend.  It was a 50 hour trip.  I did not know why we were making this 50 hour trip to North Dakota in December, and quite frankly I was pretty skeptical about the idea.  In fact, I was pretty grouchy about the idea.…

Pigtails . . . fresh from the shower.  Oh how we love them around here!  The Banana likes them because they are fun.  The Mama likes them because they are are so stinking cute, the way they just curl right up in a little spiral, and then dry so soft…

Squirmy LOVES a face to play with.  He likes kid faces, dad faces, mom faces.  Faces make my little guy happy and he bestows upon them his hugest, slobbery toothless grin, the kind of grin that sort of looks like a dinosaur about to devour its prey, if dinosaurs actually…

While I cooked Thanksgiving dinner the kidlets set up a school in the piano living room.  Guess who was the teacher? She had a wonderful time being in charge, and her patient students were very obedient, which is why playing school was an activity that lasted several hours.  The students…

The choice for breakfast in the bathtub was homemade granola and “kid yogurt” (vanilla yogurt, as opposed to plain Greek yogurt which is referred to as “Mama yogurt.”  Mama yogurt has significantly less sugar in it in comparison to kid yogurt.).  We were up extra early to fit in presents…

It is a Mason-Dietrich tradition to make raspberry rice pudding each year for Thanksgiving (and often for Christmas too).  The pudding is rich, sweet and utterly delicious.  You may recall reading it about in the past when we shared Thanksgiving with friends in Wisconsin, although by the time I actually…

The Banana:  You heat up your oven to 8 degrees. Classmate 1:  You bake the turkey for 5 minutes. Classmate 2:  If the turkey falls on the floor, you clean it up really good. Classmate 3:  Then you stick it in the microwave. Admittedly, I didn’t try this procedure with…

Today is Mr. Sneaky Pants’ last day of being five!  That really has nothing to do with the rest of this post, but Mr. Sneaky Pants is definitely counting down the minutes until his birthday tomorrow. More than a year ago, Mr. SP and The Banana were incredibly whiny every…

He’s still quite thrilled about his new rolling over trick.  He’s been practicing a lot, and he’s gotten quite quick at the procedure,  It makes him happy, happy, happy to roll over and find someone’s face in front of him.  He stays happy, wiggling, scooting and squirming on his belly…

Squirmy really loves his big sisters.  There are few people quite as exciting as those two girls, who can induce squeals and grins and happy wiggles without hardly trying at all.  He loves his big brother too, but because Squirmy still throws up constantly, and spit up makes Mr. SP…