Thursday, May 28, 2009




College Pal Weekend

So, in 2003 we started getting together every summer for a Chicks in the Mountains backpacking and camping trip. We'd shoot for a couple days in the mountains outside Bellingham, hiking among the lupine, swimming in alpine lakes and cooking tinfoil meals over a mini-camp stove. The last couple of years had to be scaled back a bit, though, due to pregnancies, babies, and dental school graduations.

Considering that, I'm not sure what our excuse is this year. But I DO know that I'm flying to Seattle tomorrow to meet up with my old college roomies from Western, 1991-1993, and I'm taking a ferry to Anderson Island in the Puget Sound to spend two kid/spouse-free days with my girls at someone's generous uncle's house.

We've got Chara-Chachi, Maureen-Mo-Mims, Shelby-Bug-Bugger, Michaela-DJMik-Mitchella, Jenny-Fiffer-Farquar, and, yours truly, Anjie-Zhay-Netty.

I wish I had more pictures on my laptop of all of us, but, alas, I don't.
Nonetheless, here are a couple photos of me with Shelby and Maureen in Skagway -- when we wore our eyebrows thick, our shirts big, and our pants too high.

Vive le nineties!

Sunday, May 24, 2009


Here, have a good laugh: Awkward Family Photos. And don't neglect the older posts on the site. One of our favs? The Lenscrafter Family...

Saturday, May 23, 2009




WE'RE ON MICK TIME

We're moving into the new house on Mick time -- that means sleeping in 'til 10, two trips to Noble Coffee, and buying a BB gun at a garage sale before shuffling a few boxes into the garage.

Good thing we have until June 15, but I'm guessing that'll come fast enough...

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Ever since Dane was a baby, I've been getting these e-family updates from Bright Horizons. The topics range from how to encourage children to share, to how to road trip with the kids, to what to look for in a childcare provider. Given my recent post about Earth Day, of course I was happy to see this article cross my Inbox.

The Importance of the Outdoors in Children's Lives

Millions of children are only allowed outdoors with close supervision. In many areas, even the backyard or front stoops are viewed as perilous. Many children come home from school and watch television and may learn more about nature from television shows such as "Survivor" or "Gilligan's Island" than from the workings of their own backyard — that marvelous ecosystem teeming with life. They may know more about exotic animals on the Discovery Channel or farm animals on PBS than the snails, squirrels, birds, worms, and bugs that live outside their windows.

Daniel Janzen, the world’s foremost tropical biologist writes: “Here's what nature does for us no matter who we are or where we live...Human animals carry around this big brain, this big device for processing input. Part of our ability to use that device depends on the complex stimuli that challenged it throughout our evolution. Nature — whatever is out there, from a single tree to a whole forest — provides a big wad of the possible information that we can process. If you diminish nature, you diminish the diversity of those stimuli. When we don’t get input from nature, we don’t end up having much sense of smell, hearing, or vision. Television becomes our reality. We can survive on that and do, but it is not nearly as complex…When we diminish nature, we turn off lots of things in our own heads…Over the past 10 or 15 years, I’ve been bothered by the fact that Americans think that they’re getting nature through TV — all those shows that bring the elephants and tigers right into the living rooms. This Musak nature destroys the reality of people’s experience outdoors. When they are actually in nature, it’s disappointing, because the big spectacular stimuli aren’t coming as fast as they do on television...” (Gallagher, W. The Power of Place: How Our Surroundings Shape Our Thoughts, Emotions, Actions. NY: Simon and Schuster.1993, p.206).

Whether or not your child learns to love the outdoors boils down to priorities and will. The purpose of life is, after all, to inhale and to live it fully and reach out eagerly without fear for new experiences. Open the back door. Walk through a park. Get out of the car. Our children deserve our effort.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

BIG NEWS

This might come out of nowhere for some of you, but Mick and I are signing on a house today - and it's supposed to close on FRIDAY!

We've kept things hush-hush since we started looking in January, especially because there can be such drama in the negotiation process, but things seem to be coming around fine and THIS LITTLE BEAUTY will soon be ours:

Workshop out back


Living room - which I plan to have more fun
optimizing than the previous tenant


Dining room

And here's the realtor's write-up:

Warm and inviting 3 bed/1 bath Cape Cod style home with new marmoleum flooring in the kitchen, hardwood floors, spacious and updated bath with custom tile, bay windows, formal dining room, wood shutters, and stone walkway. The .16 acre corner lot with R-2 zoning, private backyard, separate studio/workshop space, deck with arbor and potential for additional unit are additional features. Located close to schools, shopping, farmers' market, parks and bike path!


One final note - our family will LOVE biking and walking all the time in this area. It's in a great, flat location close to town. Additionally, the kids will be able to walk to their elementary school, middle school, high school, and even college if they want to!

Of course, I'll post more pictures after we move in and get settled - and will include other rooms in the house as well as the back yard (which feels like "the secret garden" and has trees and swings and benches and hiding places and good spots to choose from for a hammock).

Thursday, May 07, 2009

Tuesday, May 05, 2009

An Award!

I can't believe it. I was nominated for this award -- I have no idea who nominated me -- and won it! I wish I could post the news clips straight onto my blog, but I'll just have to settle for this link for now: Woohoo!

Monday, May 04, 2009

Q & A with Super-Mom

Dane asked me the other day why grownups grow hair on their private parts. I told him that was an excellent question and that I think he might just have found his Science Fair topic for next year.

hahahahahaha... Can you imagine??? (We thought that was funny.)

And then, of course, I told him a theory about caveman days and keeping warm and said we could look up real answers later.

Yeah, I'll get right on that...