Motherhood
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A Little Bit of Holiday Sparkle
Sparkle is one of the things I love about this season, the glitter on ornaments, white tree lights shining through the night, silvery white snowflakes falling on our world. The sparkle helps me beat back the dark, the literal dark of our shortened days here in the Puget Sound region, and the dark that comes on the heels of tragic new stories or simply with missing people I love.
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Peach Cobbler
Peaches seem to surprise me every year. I never crave a peach. Maybe because I’m much more of a savory gal than a sweet tooth. I always, always look forward to tomatoes and onions and squash blossoms from the garden, dreaming up all the savory recipes I can make. When the season is over I miss them, especially summer fresh tomatoes. But I never crave a peach. Somehow, though, when late summer brings those juicy sweet, a tiny bit tart peaches to the market I am in love. Maybe it’s because they truly are amazing in their season; you can smell them before you even see them. And maybe it’s…
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Family Camping at Moran State Park
We took the kids camping last weekend on Orcas Island. Let me start off by saying I hate camping. Seriously, I do. I have nightmare camping memories. When I was a kid in Denver I went to Camp St. Malo for a week one summer. One of the nights we camped outside it was POURING down rain, there were at least twenty kids plus counselors in a large tent (more like a big tarp tossed over some stakes) and not only were we trying really hard to stay dry, but so were the mice who kept coming into our tent. Twenty soggy, tired, cold girl campers, their counselors and mice.…
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On Being a Mom
One morning this past week I took both kids into the doctor for their well-child checkups. Both kids at the same time, which I told myself last year I would never do again because last year they acted like rioting monkeys instead of well-behaved children. Somehow along the year I must have forgotten how horrible that visit was, me practically begging Jasper to behave so I could concentrate on the doctor’s questions, me in a full-body hold of Lily screaming bloody murder while the nurse tried to give Lily her shots. There was a point during that visit last year when I wasn’t sure we would all survive. Somehow we…
