I realize it's been a while, but things have been busy!  Got to go camping last week(end) for 5 days with some good friends of ours.  The weather wasn't all that great -- rainy and cool for the most part -- but we did get some swimming in, both inland and on Lake Michigan, got to visit the Dunes and got to listen to some good music at Interlochen ( Read more... )

The tooth fairy got to make a visit to pick up not one, but TWO of Elise's baby teeth last night.  Here she is making a call to Nana to tell her the news.  This was a momentous occasion, as Elise was one of the only kids her in her class who hadn't lost any teeth yet. Thank goodness she has a big sister who could help her with the technical aspects ( Read more... )

Instead of our traditional school's-out camping trip, we stuck around town and did some local activities.

Thursday evening we packed a dinner of lentil and rice soft tacos, black corn tortilla chips, baby carrots and grapes then rode our bikes down to meet our friends at the Center for the Arts for a free (and short!) conedancing (NOT pole dancing ( Read more... )

We've been getting an extraordinary amount of rain here.  Thunderstorms have been a nightly occurance, and the rivers are roaring.  No flooding yet, and the sun is out today, thank goodness.

The girls are on the countdown for school being out.  Today was their year-end picnic at a park that is within walking distance to the school.  They came home ( Read more... )

We made the difficult decision to trade our annual trip to Hiawatha Traditional Music Festival in Marquette with a more local festival.  I hated to give up Hiawatha.  The atmosphere and music, not to mention the friends we see every year, are what keep drawing us back.  But with gas climbing as high as it is, I just can't see how we can make the ( Read more... )

Fair warning on this video -- if you are at work or have an aversion to seeing a bare breast you may not want to watch it. On the other hand, if you want to see yet another benefit of breastfeeding, by all means, click the link. (Blame my pro-lactation friend, Amy, for this one!)

This past weekend was awesome!  Although Keith guessed where we were going the morning we were to leave -- and I had done so well at keeping it a surprise for 2 months!  L  I nicknamed him Snoopy for the trip.  He just couldn’t stand it that he didn’t know what were doing so it did all the searches he could online and came up with the concert in K- ( Read more... )

The flowers in front of our house are my friends.  They are the flowers that had been Marie's, the woman who built this place with her husband in 1936, raised her family here and died peacefully in her bedroom here.  These flowers welcomed us to the house when we first moved in (in April, 2001), and are the flowers that have survived drain tile ( Read more... )

It's official -- Nadia has decided she's going to act her age.  I haven't figured out yet if her behavior is A) an inevitable part of toddlerhood, or B) because I'm expecting her to become a demon because of her age.  Alina and Elise both went through this (as has almost every other child I know), so I suspect it's A.  The minute Nadia turned three ( Read more... )

You Are Cilantro


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