Merry Christmas! This Christmas will go down as the one that was bitterly cold — when the temps got down so low that we had to put a heat lamp in our chicken coop. Not as cold as the North Pole, though, because Santa and his reindeer had no problem making deliveries. Before the kids
This week Anna and I spent a lot of time getting our garden ready. This year we’re growing three, four? kinds of peppers, eggplants, zucchini, cucumbers, tomatillos, kale, lots of herbs, and even though I say every year that I’ll never grow tomatoes again — we’re growing tomatoes again. I also planted a big patch
We celebrated Holy Week and Easter weekend by being very, very busy. That always happens, though, doesn’t it? If normal weeks are busy then holiday weeks will feel extra busy. I feel a temptation to chastise myself, “I’m doing this wrong. We need to slow down, simplify, take in the season.” But I also know
Merry, merry Christmas from the Kriegers! Merry Christmas, especially, from Anna’s bedhead and Thomas’s cowlick, and four kids who, when they find out that all kids aren’t forced to wait at the top of the stairs for their parents to get a cup of coffee and walk around aimlessly for a few minutes. Our Christmas
One of the beneficial side-effects of our new work-from-home lifestyle is that between Zoom meetings and phone calls, Tom carves out some time to put Anna down for her nap every afternoon. This is different than all of our other kids, who Tom almost never put down for naps because he has always been at
I keep getting Timehop reminders of what life looked like one year ago. The photos are all sunny and happy captures of the kids in the backyard against a backdrop of daffodils and an uncharacteristically mild spring. With every photo I think — wow, we had no idea…I’m glad we had no idea. Also, my hair
In the past few weeks, my church has been slowly and cautiously resuming in-person worship services. In an effort to love and protect attendees, and out of deference to authorities, there is a litany of strange, “never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine this” precautions. Once everything started shutting down, church was the
Sometimes I wish I could teleport every now and then, to be lifted out of a particularly draining moment of monotony and placed into a different phase of life. Maybe if I spent a day or two as the elderly lady in the grocery store, telling young moms to “enjoy it because it goes so
I am always hesitant to write about current events. I go for it every now and then, but I do so tentatively, knowing that I (usually) don’t have any expertise to offer. Also because it’s easier for me to just sit inside the four walls of my quarantine and write about my vegetable garden and
I’ve been preparing for Easter for weeks. I started gathering gifts for the kids and I splurged on a Easter dress for myself. I’d get coordinating outfits for the kids later, I told myself. I’d wait to buy out Kroger’s supply of Peeps until closer to Easter, I thought. Otherwise I’d just eat them and