• Personal

    Pumpkin Picking

    Let’s go! We said. Where? They said. You’ll see. We said. They were skeptical.   That is, until we drove into the dusty dirt parking lot and Mikey cried out, “Hey! I remember this place!” Then it was all smiles and cheer. Oh they of little faith.                                                                                                       Now maybe they won’t be as skeptical the next time we spring…

  • Personal

    Universal

    Driving by those billboards advertising Universal Studio’s “buy one day get the whole next year free!” one too many times and we finally caved. And went. Right after they had set up all their super scary super gross Halloween decorations. Parents of the year, right here. So, after we made it into the park with the three older kids walking with their heads ducked down staring straight at the ground and clutching onto our shirts to guide them, and Jonah cluelessly staring wide-eyed at all the creepy dummies and repeatedly asking me why all the mean, scary guys were looking so mean and scary, we concluded that there was just…

  • Personal

    First Day Favorites

    So after one last last hurrah at Legoland, which I don’t have any pictures of because I didn’t take my big camera because Phil got a nifty new little camera he wanted to try out but the battery died before we really got to use it so that day will have to just be briefly noted here and live in our memories because I am teetering dangerously close to being now three months behind and I just cannot linger on that thought too long before feeling overwhelmed because now Thanksgiving is NEXT WEEK. And Christmas is RIGHT AFTER THAT. Gah. Okay. Deep breaths. First day of school. Back on August…

  • Personal

    Their Albums

    Several years ago, I bought three small photo albums. I bought three because we had only three children at the time. And then we moved. And then we had surprise baby number four. And then we moved a couple more times. And life kept happening in between all that. So those three photo albums kept getting packed, unpacked, stored away, and packed again. Still in their cellophane wrappers, with only the generic picture slipped in the front to let you know that you’re supposed to put your own cherished photographed memories inside. NOT let them sit empty and shoved here and there through the years. Phil came across the albums…