I really want to be better about updating this blog. This is my journal, scrapbook, “baby” book and personal memory bank all rolled into one, and it bothers me that with all the writing I seem to do these days that I’m not more diligent about recording basic everyday stuff. I do a lot of […]

I’m way overdue for a nice newsy post. In the meantime, here is our crew on Halloween:

Our little witch with Word Girl and Captain Huggy Face.
For comparison:

A Fairly Unadorned Chronology of Events for the Sake of Family History
The night before Christmas Eve we did a little cooking prep. R chopped potatoes for soup, while I mixed dry ingredients and chopped pecans for the traditional Christmas Eve morning spicy buttermilk coffee cake.
Christmas Eve morning we stayed in our pajamas for much of […]

I wrote her a fill-in-the-blank riddle:
Election Night was quite a joy, with so much jubilation,
For Senator Obama now will lead a grateful nation.
There’s just one more event to wait for with anticipation:
Your daughter got us tickets to the big…

Tonight at dinner:
Me: Hey kids, we received a box from Gramps and Gran… there are some more presents under the tree now!
little she-who-is, excitedly: Oh I can’t wait for [me thinking: oh, here we go with the gift-lust] you to open the gift that I made you in art class!
May it always be thus.
Image: Christmas […]

Did you know that this blog is almost five years old? My very first post was a fairly silly categorization of Christmas songs. In that post I admitted my love for “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” which I think is the best [secular] Christmas song ever. It would seem that many recording artists agree […]

Huge weekend of family/holiday fun. May have overdone it a bit—feeling tired and bleh today. Have cleared the schedule and hope to rest and recover. It says something that M told us she was too tired to go anywhere today. Toddlers aren’t exactly known for reflective self-awareness.
Saturday C and M went to Parents’ Day Out […]

This is a Christmas gift for C (little she-who-is), who is afraid of Santa. The pseudonyms don’t quite work but you get the idea.
‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house
not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would […]

Today was mommy-daughter time with little she-who-is. Look what we made!

We’ve definitely refined our technique—I got the consistency of the icing better. Last year’s was the Salvador Dali house.
It took us all day: assemble walls, nurse J, put on roof, nurse J… etc.
And here is the side that M helped with:

In other tales of domesticity, […]

So it’s a Clear Channel Christmas again—the holiday hits have been non-stop since about a week ago. Since it’s such an early Thanksgiving, this year’s CCC season may be the longest on record. This year in honor of those broadcast heroes, I am working on a complicated theorem to explain CC programming.
I think the […]

This past Sunday, Pentecost Sunday, was my fourth anniversary at Suburban Presbyterian Church.
It was a beautiful service, and always is every year. We have a huge round communion table that the flower guild fills with red, orange and yellow candles—twenty-five or thirty of them, at various heights, on a lovely red tablecloth. The effect is […]

I had a nice Mother’s Day yesterday.
I had the day off from church—it was Youth Sunday, and Senior Pastor and I alternate taking off the “special” Sundays. So I slept until 8, when R brought in the newspaper. Then I dozed/read until 8:30 when the girls brought in breakfast—eggs, homemade biscuits and strawberries.
C gave me […]

C: I don’t feel Jesus in my heart today.
R: That’s OK. Sometimes we don’t.
C: Well, maybe he’s the one making it go ker-thump, ker-thump.
Had Easter dinner this afternoon with The Traditionals, a wonderful family who seemed to invite truly random people to their house. You could tell there was none of that dinner party, “Whom […]

Well, the Clergy Superbowl is almost upon us, and so, I have offered up this Friday Five (with apologies for the irreverent title):
1. Will this Sunday be Palms only, Passion only, or hyphenated?
Hyphenated. Palms at the beginning, Passion at the sermon (I’m preaching), Communion at the end. I’m sure by the end of the service […]

I have a cold, durnit.
Conflicts are being worked through.
The divine miss m was downright giggly all evening.
Little she-who-is sounded out “no” on a sign.
I am doing chapel for the three-year-old classes at preschool tomorrow.
In past years the chapel teacher has done a very generic “Easter means new life, spring and flowers and butterflies” message because […]

Wow. Preach three services, teach Sunday School, then host seven girls in your home. That’s the very definition of a full weekend.
So I’m leaving tomorrow for Woo-woo Guru Deep Breathing Angels on Pinheads Retreat. I need it so badly. Don’t we all? Aren’t we all overworked and overstimulated?
It has been a real push to get […]

So we have four services on Christmas Eve. The first is a children’s pageant. This year I will be working the nursery for that service, with the assistance (?) of little she and miss m. As a parent, I never get to volunteer in the nursery, so I’m excited about that.
Then we will have our […]

One of my favorite topics:
1. Favorite cookie/candy/baked good without which, it’s just not Christmas.
Our pralines, although we’ve had two botched batches so far this year. I don’t get what we’re doing wrong… I mean, it’s really humid today, but we used to make them in Houston!
2. Do you do a fancy dinner on Christmas Eve, […]