A couple of weekends ago I made a quick trip to the mountains of North Carolina to see my baby brother get married. It was a very small ceremony on the literal top of a mountain. Like, five miles of switchbacks to get to the top, and the last mile was gravel road. My rental car was displeased, but she made it. And here’s a quick dump of some of my other favorite pics from the day…
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It’s National Spelling Bee week, which has me strolling back down memory lane to the five years that Griffin spent demonstrating his orthographic excellence. The Spelling Bee was a big deal in our house during Griffin’s fourth through eighth grade years. He had proven himself to be an excellent speller in third grade, with his teacher providing him with special weekly spelling lists of words taken from the Bee itself. It was rare for him to miss any of these words on his spelling test; we suspected that he had something akin to an eidetic memory at that point. After proving his spelling prowess in third grade, it was time…
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Back in June of 2011 my boys were 12 and 8, and I was a stressed-out mom trying to be a better parent. Yelling had become my default mode of communication when the kids were acting up, and I hated that I had let myself become that way. So I made a commitment to tell my kids something I loved about them each and every day of June. And I posted those words on Facebook and encouraged everyone to try something similar with their own children. I don’t know if anyone else ever completed the challenge, but I was glad that I was able to. And when June came around…
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Happy Father’s Day to all the dads, grandads, stepdads, fur dads, and like-a-dads out there! I hope you have had a fantastic day. A week ago I traveled down to North Carolina for my father’s big 75th birthday bash. And since his birthday is always so close to Father’s Day, I thought today would be a good day to share pics from my trip. To start, some idiot decided that a 6:30am flight was a good idea. OK, I am that idiot. But Southwest doesn’t have a lot of flights out of Syracuse every day, so I grabbed what I could get. My flight to Charlotte, NC was pretty uneventful…
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After our trip to Maine and the lovely lighthouses we saw there, Vance and I started thinking about the lighthouses closer to home. I think we kind of take them for granted, seeing as we live so close to Lake Ontario and they’re kind of just there? I mean, we find ourselves in Oswego a lot, and the West Pierhead Lighthouse is something we see all the time, and we never think about how special it is to live so close to such a piece of history. So, in search of a family activity for the summer, we decided to visit as many of the Lake Ontario lighthouses (US side)…
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What has been keeping me so busy that I neglected my blogging duties? This crochet project! The past few weeks I’ve been working on this wrap for my mother for her birthday (which was yesterday). The pattern is Cassia and the yarn is Dewy DK in Oxblood, both from Expression Fiber Arts. Watching Chandi’s videos on her YouTube channel has taught me everything I know about crochet. I can’t always afford her beautiful hand-dyed yarns, but everyone once in a while I treat myself to some, and when I saw this yarn I absolutely had to have it for this project. My next crafty challenge is to try to learn…
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Nerdy, sweet, and goofy, with a huge heart, eclectic taste in music, a razor-sharp wit, and a brain that can be a little scary at times. This is Griffin, my “baby.” He will be turning 20 this month and I can’t believe how time has flown. In his life he’s been a theatre kid, a swimmer, a tennis player, a spelling bee champion, an Eagle Scout, a world traveler, and a D&D nerd. His homemade Halloween costumes are legendary. His creative mind is always operating at top speed, and he has music in his soul. But he’ll also talk to you about complex mathematical equations and take you down quantum…
