Today James took the boys miniature golfing in Santa Maria. I’m told Jacob won and they all had a great time. Apparently there was one hole where two of their balls went into the hole and never came out. After James jammed the end of his club into the hole…
On Tuesday of this week, James took the boys to see the new Rogue One Star Wars movie. And today they had to wrestle the DVD player out of storage so the three of them could watch the first Star Wars movie, which is technically the fourth? I don’t even…
What with all this cancer business, I’ve fallen behind on my reporting of magical creatures. Back on November 14th, Nate was beaming as he finally received his membership card into the elite, prestigious club of grown-up tooth ownership. He came home with a teeny tiny envelope, perfectly sized for miniature dental…
On the 23rd we all gathered at Stanford for James’ surgery. At lunch, Grandma Suzy, Uncle Geoff and I braved the rain and headed over to the new Poké Bowl restaurant at the mall. Long story short, it was deelish. A bowl full of healthy, fresh, flavorful yumminess. Absolutely no…
Growing-up in the mountains meant we had a neighbor with hundreds of bootlegged videocassettes in a neighborhood lending library, and I’d never had pizza delivered. Jake and Nate have spent the first, impressionable years of their lives in the ‘burbs. They walked to school and served 700 trick-or-treaters and answered the…
Let’s face it, we’ve all noticed the marked parallels between Santa Claus and the other omnipotent, omnipresent bearded man up north. He sees you when you’re sleeping? He knows when you’re awake? Surrounded by a group of devout followers… and everything captured carefully in an enormous book. If you don’t…
I’ll never forget the 2012 lead-up to the presidential election. We were on my sabbatical up in Ashland, Oregon, half listening to the presidential debate on TV. We didn’t think the boys were paying attention until Jake asked with sincere interest, “Are they talking about weapons again?” What I thought…
I spent my childhood in the mountains. Some years, we would get one group of trick-or-treaters that my dad most certainly scheduled. I can neither confirm nor deny that my mom passed out candy collected the previous Halloween. And to Granddad’s credit, he would load us up into the green VW…
I’m not sure how many waves of fashion popularity fluorescence factually claims, but at the risk of aging myself, I’m pretty sure I’ve witnessed three of the four. In elementary school, my little brother was quite the proud porter of neon, head to toe. At the time, I certainly appreciated the form of fluorescence, but…
When I was five my mom tricked me into playing soccer. She told me my best friend Zoe was playing. Apparently Zoe’s mom told her I was playing… and a few weeks later we were the only two girls on a green team called Rational Moving. Those first games were rough—…