Apparently not a lot of people play on the sandy beach in November.  For our family, though, 50 degrees definitely constitutes beach weather!  After school on Monday the kidlets and I zipped down to the sandy beach, only to find it completely deserted!  Not a soul in sight!  I wasn't…

 We were hiking through the forest when we came to a half eaten bird carcass.  It wasn't particularly alarming because Brutus the cat brings us a lot of special dead animal love gifts and deposits them right out the back door where we are sure to see them.  After looking…

The weather has been amazing.  AMAZING.  50 degrees for 5 days!  We have been making the best of it every chance we get.  Monday is my less-scheduled-day-to-relax, so in the morning The Banana, Mr. SP and I went hiking to Rock Knob at Hartley park.  To make it more of…

Some very good friends of our family from residency flew to Minnesota this weekend, and we were so excited to have them zip up North to visit us and spend the night on Friday.  They live far away in Montana, and we don't get to see them often.  Not only…

Every time she gets ahold of a box, she's a happy girl.  Today was a teaching day for me.  Ya Ya came home from school, located three new cardboard boxes and headed up to the office, where she stayed the entire afternoon . . . three and a half hours…

She's been full of mischief, this one.  Oh yes, she has.  

Here's the latest (and hopefully last) victim of the flu at our house.  He held out a long time, through his sisters' long, drawn out time of sick, but he finally succumbed to the raging fever on Monday.  So, we spent a lot of the week cuddling up with an…

There isn't anything better than your sword-loving father who takes time out of his day to do a little backyard jousting with you, using the homemade swords you built yourself and the special wooden shields you built and designed together.    

We were down to the wire on whether this costume would arrive in the mail in time, even though I ordered it with plenty of time to spare.  It did arrive, much to the delight of Mr. SP.  He immediately put it on to wear to the boo ball. The…

Here's the fairy, dressed in layers and ready to trick or treat the neighborhood.