where I talk with my inside voice
We got back last night from a 10-day vacation that included a 7-day cruise aboard the Norwegian Getaway. We stayed a couple of extra nights in New Orleans to explore the French Quarter. Honestly, the trip was exhausting, and I need a vacation to recover from my vacation, but we had fun and made lots of memories. Photos from the...
This has been a challenging year – drama at work and losing both parents – it was a lot. But there was plenty to celebrate too. Not least of which is the establishment of The Pipes Family Foundation. We won’t really get that rolling until next year, but the hard part of setting everything up is done, now we just...
This is the time of year when I normally start looking ahead at a potential family vacation in the spring or the summer. The scheduling has been complicated by the fact that Noah is off at college now, but this is the new reality, so we just have to roll with it. He is applying to be a summer welcome...
Because ECF gave them a grant of $10,000 this year, the St. Louis Ballet sent me an invitation to watch their dress rehearsal for The Nutcracker. So Noah and I went to see it tonight. It was a really good show – the dancers were great and the costumes were very festive.
Josie took the test and got her driver’s license today! Way to go, bitty! This is almost a year earlier than Noah got his license, so she’ll have plenty of time to build up her skills behind the wheel. And because she’s decided she wants to drive the Element, I thought it was time for an update. So I got...
Homecoming has certainly become a bigger deal now that Noah is in college. I headed down to Columbia to hangout with my friend Troy (Carlton was sick or he would have come too) and watch the game against Auburn (which Mizzou just barely managed to win in the last minute of the game). I had never been to a homecoming...
Iliza brought her “Get Ready” tour to the Stifel Theater tonight. Dixie and I had been planning to see this show for quite a while, but I surprised her with VIP tickets, so we got to go backstage after the show and meet Iliza. It was a great show and it was really cool to talk to her afterwards.
I took Josie to the St. Louis Art Fair in Clayton today. I think she was surprised at the scale of it – about six city blocks filled with booths selling every kind of art imaginable. We also had some good food – street corn from one of the food trucks and we had a late lunch at a place...
Our firstborn son is now a college student. That day in the St. Luke’s delivery room, holding him in my lap, I sure wasn’t thinking about this day. It has always seemed so far away. But the sand keeps spilling through the hourglass, whether we want it to or not. So today we got our young man moved into his...
I took the kids to the History Museum to see the new and improved exhibit on the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. They did a great job putting it together and there are a ton of interesting artifacts on display, including a lead crystal punchbowl very similar to my grandmother Ellen’s. This might be our last homeschool “field trip” since...
Team Tappmeyer organized a going-away party for Noah, right before he heads off to Mizzou. It was so nice of them to do that – they are going to miss him, but not as much as we are.
Josie has been wanting to paint a mural on her bedroom wall for a while now, and she finally bought the acrylic paint that she needed and moved all of her furniture out of the way. Her room was torn up for a couple of weeks, but it’s complete now and she did such a good job! I’m proud of...
Josie and I went to see Fiddler on the Roof at the Muny. She remembered a couple of the songs from when we watched the movie a while back. If I were a rich man, I would get season tickets so we could make this a family tradition.
We just got back from an overnight stay in Columbia. Noah was on campus for Summer Welcome. It doesn’t seem like that long ago that I visited with my parents, but it was actually 32 years ago. Where does the time go? I didn’t take many photos this trip, but I did get a few inside the Agriculture building –...
Tonight we went to see Les Miserables at the Muny. Grandma Linda shared a few of her season tickets with us this year because this is their last year going (we might have to buy their seats for next season!). It was a really good show.
I wanted to visit the National Museum of Transportation for Father’s Day this year and my family indulged me. We walked around in the heat checking out the trains and cars (including a beautiful Pontiac Fiero that makes me miss mine) and the other exhibits there. Then we went to Dalie’s Smokehouse for lunch and got some of the last...
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