I love beautifully-wrapped gifts. I really enjoy taking time to wrap gifts well and make generous bows. The presentation, I think, is part of the gift. I love neutral wrapping paper and prominent bows. That’s what I do for baby showers and birthday gifts and especially Christmas. Never in my life have I ever used
When we play with Play-Doh, David usually doesn’t ever really form the dough “things”, he just smashes and drops it on the ground and asks me to flatten long pieces into roads for his cars. Meanwhile, his sister constantly tries to sneak tastes the Play-Doh even though, after every time she manages a bit in
The only thing we had on the agenda of our family lame-cation was a trip to the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center. We figured we’d need at least one actual activity because toddlers operate in a time warp. That’s where that saying, “the days are long but the years are short” comes from — toddlers mess with the
A few weeks ago Tom was looking at his schedule and realized he had a bunch of vacation days he needed to use before the end of the year. Since one of the rules of the Krieger family is that letting vacation time go to waste is a crime, he started trying to figure out
Yesterday (November 30) was the first day of Advent, which means today (December 1) is the second day of Advent, which means it’s not too late to start an Advent devotional Advent is the season of waiting. And OHMIGOSH we are waiting in this house. We have a little bag of treats we got for
This has been a tough month. That’s why this update is more than two weeks late. I just considered skipping another month. But, last night, I decided to write it — bursting with whining and complaining — so that next month I can just bypass all that and tell you about the wonderful things my
Last night we went to a Thanksgiving celebration with friends, and we were driving home a bit later than we should have; not respecting bedtime quite as closely as we promised we would. When we stay out too late, Mary Virginia is not a happy traveller. While she cries the entire way home, the rest of us
As Thanksgiving approaches, lots of my friends do “thankful” activities with their kids. The idea is simple, ask the kids what they’re thankful for and display their answers — and yours. This is our take on it. I decided to trace our hands and hang them like a garland in our dining room. Initially I
We didn’t get around to carving our pumpkins in time for Halloween this year. To me, that’s terrible foreshadowing. If I can’t get ready for Halloween in time, then I might as well just forget about being ready for Christmas? Even though our pumpkins weren’t ready for Halloween, I still wanted to harvest the seeds
My mom mentioned the other day that the leaves were beautiful at home — one of the prettiest falls she can remember. It occurred to me that now that I live in Richmond, a relatively flat city, I miss out on the fall colors in the mountains. When I was growing up I took the