An Alabama Fairytale.

For those of you who live in Alabama, you may have had enough already of this story. Or maybe you’ve been avoiding it and waiting for the overview. But I’ve had a lot of people – locally and not – ask me “what exactly happened down there?”, so I felt it my duty, since I […]

You Can’t Go Back.

Chris and I started dating in 1999. It was a previous century – quite literally. I was 17 and he was 23 and neither of us had much money or culture. As such, our most elaborate dates happened at The Olive Garden. There was only one Garden Of Olives in town at the time, and […]

On Visiting The Knife-Happy.

I’ve noticed that there are two types of 30-somethings. Those that have a regular visit to the Dermatologist to get every millimeter of their skin scanned for abnormalities and are constantly mentioning what they’ve recently had removed, And those that have never visited a Dermatologist. I’ve always been in the second group. Not because I […]

Like Five-Year-Olds Dating.

Noah and Loulie have been close since they met. She’s the Girl One Street Up, he’s the dashing gentleman with the giant blue eyes. (She’s got some pretty fantastic blue eyes herself, so my grandkids are going to look AMAZING.) Noah often makes plans for their future, as in this conversation: “I am a boy […]

The Perils of Standing Up.

It took weeks of parental foot-putting-down for us to convince Noah to stand up to pee. He liked sitting down just fine and saw no reason to stand, thank you very much. Lazy peeing is good peeing. And finally, when out of sheer obedience he would stand, he would inch closer and closer to the […]

Second Time’s a Charm

Guest Post by Chris the Husband. Last year about this time, I ran a full marathon for the first time – with a disgusting sinus infection in a light rain – and called it a win. I finished without being miserable. This, boys and girls, is why we train – not only so we survive […]

Running The Weekend Away.

Running. I know. It’s an obnoxious subject. I have a friend who is a serious frenemy of my running habits, and she has informed me that I was really close to getting an intervention after I posted this photo of Chris and I a couple weeks ago: So I do understand that I am pushing […]

Crack Muffin.

Our family’s introduction to Crack Muffin came about in a bizarrely serendipitous way. It all started last summer. We were at our usual grocery store one day, casually shopping for our usual groceries, which did not include any boxed baked goods. As I surveyed the cracker aisle for the cracker option that was on sale […]

Not-Crazy-Renee and the Family Pet.

Not-Crazy-Renee is a homeschool Mom like myself. That somehow puts one in a different category of willingness to do bizarre things for educational purposes. Couple that with Not-Crazy-Renee being not-crazy and…well… So Loulie wanted a pet snake. Loulie is Not-Crazy-Renee’s oldest child. She and Noah are tight – so much so that they are already […]