We were driving in the van one afternoon and “In Da Club” came on the radio. As always, I started singing along. “Go, go, go shawty It’s your birthday We gon’ party like it’s your birthday … You can find me in the club, bottles full of bub…” Mary interrupted my 2003 performance and asked,
The older my kids get, the more I find I really appreciate annual events. These annual markers — holidays, special events — are always the moments when I really see time passing. Otherwise it’s easy for the days to just run together, into a mush of homework, sandwich crusts, and the odd pajama day here
Merry Christmas from Anna and Long Cat! We had such an awesome Christmas, and if this blog is serving as my memory book, that is what I want to remember. Christmas was awesome. Just look at how great it was! David got a balaclava! (He also does a thing that he got from Tom — he
Happy Thanksgiving! For our family this year was a year of travel over the mountains and through the woods for Thanksgiving in Franklin County. My hometown is so, so beautiful — something I never appreciated or even noticed when I was growing up. Now, when we drive home I can’t help but take photos out
About two weeks ago Anna turned six, but we were all too exhausted to even sing a proper rendition of “Happy Birthday.” Tom was busy running a 2:55 marathon, and I was exhausted because I had to wake up at 5:30 a.m. to get him to the start line. TWO HOURS AND FIFTY-FIVE MINUTES! You
This fall David joined his middle school’s cross country team. The second he joined the team, before he even brought home his school-issued singlet, I fell head-first into the murky waters of living vicariously through my kid’s sport. Until now I’ve been completely immune to this. As a person who can barely throw — and
This morning, in between bites of her first-day-of-school waffle, Mary looked up and said, “If I were you I’d be really sad this morning.” No one knows me like Mary. This school year marks so many milestones for our family, and the lump in my throat has been ready to rise to the surface for
By: Mary Last summer our cousins who live in Vancouver, Canada came to visit us in Virginia! Ellie, Abram, John, and Gabby came without their parents. Their visit was delayed by a few weeks due to a COVID outbreak, and then our trip to Kings Dominion got almost got rained out, and then there was
I took Mary for a haircut at my salon before the start of school. This was her first experience with all the bells and whistles of hair care — shampoo, scalp massage, post-cut styling. This is a major upgrade from the lollipop that comes with the toddler hair cuttery. Although, a lollipop might put the whole
As I type this it has been almost exactly seven weeks since the end of school, but I feel like it’s the first week of summer. The first month and a half of summer was swallowed whole by morning swim practice, sleep away camps, vacation, and swim champs. Now all of those things are over