where I talk with my inside voice
This was Andrea Bocelli’s first visit to St. Louis and it was a great show. He had the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra on stage playing his music. The first half was a lot of opera songs that I recognized but probably couldn’t tell you what they were from. The second half started with the St. Louis Symphony Choir performing the...
This week is the 200th anniversary of Missouri becoming a state and part of the celebration was held in St. Charles – Missouri’s first capitol. I took the kids to see the festivities. There were booths arranged in chronological order representing many different parts of our history and heritage. There was a fife and drum corps. There were games and...
Noah just returned from two weeks at Philmont Scout Ranch. I am very proud of him for this accomplishment. He had to spend several months in advance going on practice hikes and conditioning himself for the physical challenges. It was an incredible trip and he had a great time. I was happy he got to go (despite COVID), but we...
Minecraft is still a big part of screen time around here, but in the last month we’ve also become addicted to Valheim – a new game that is still in early release on Steam, but has over 6 million players. Something about the description and the screenshots appealed to me, and for only $20, I figured it was worth a...
The pandemic has had an impact on everything, including furniture production, apparently. In early January, we ordered a new loveseat and two recliners to update the look in the living room. The loveseat was finally delivered this week and we are expecting the recliners in early April. I’ll post a photo when the room is complete.
We’ve not had good luck with the Whirlpool dishwasher we bought in May 2018. We had the plastic bracket that holds the upper basket break shortly after we bought it (which was a fairly inexpensive fix), last year the spinning water sprayer on the bottom of the upper basket filled up with food particles and would no longer spin, and...
We bought Minecraft for Noah in 2013, not knowing what an impact it would have on our lives. That first Christmas, I remember we spent an entire day playing it, and that eventually became an annual tradition that all four of us engaged in. Yesterday, we continued the tradition – although not for the entire day – with Josie, Noah...
It’s not the greatest photo, but I wanted some proof that we saw it, and all I had was my cell phone. It’s somewhat surprising I could get any image at all. If you have a telescope, you already know how unusual it is to be able to see two planets in the same field of view, but to have...
Two weeks ago we braved the pandemic to visit Jackson Pianos downtown and let the kids try out some of their refurbished instruments. Coincidentally, they had a 1988 Yamaha upright there that the kids both liked and it was big enough that Noah could actually fit under it. I wrote them a check and we headed home. A few days...
We had our oven go out last Friday and managed to get a repairman scheduled for Monday (before Thanksgiving) to come look at it. He tested the temperature sensor and concluded that it was our control board that needed replacing. A quick search revealed that they don’t make that part anymore, so it cost me $109 to find out that...
Needless to say, I have fallen behind in my blogging habits here. My last post was from our Virginia vacation in 2018. I want to say that I will go back and fill in some significant events since then, but I can’t promise anything. A lot has happened – it’s been too crazy – but starting in early June 2019,...
If I have to stay home, due to the pandemic, I should at least be productive around the house. Thankfully, between Amazon and curbside pick-up at Lowes, I can still get the materials I need to work on a few things I’ve been planning for a while. I installed some permanent landscape lights near the house and at the base...
This has been a rough month. It started with me having a disagreement with the chainsaw (the chainsaw won, by the way), and a trip to Urgent Care for five stitches. A few days later, the United States finally succumbed to the coronavirus pandemic that has been spreading across the globe. Despite what seemed to be ample warnings in Jan...
Pea Ridge National Park is a Civil War battlefield in northern Arkansas, not too far from Branson. We wound up taking Noah’s troop there for a weekend campout because our original plans fell through. I had agreed to organize the Feb campout, which is always scheduled over President’s Day weekend and usually includes a visit to some patriotic landmark like...
The kids wanted to make some extra money, so they asked me if they could go around asking the neighbors if they could rake their leaves. I said sure. I even drove them up to Ace Hardware to buy some equipment (a new rake and bear claws) and the paper bags for yard waste. They spent the day walking the...
Strangely enough, Jane was the person who told me that my aunt Marlene had passed away. She just happened to call my dad the day it happened, and she sent me a message on Facebook letting me know. So Dixie and I drove down to El Dorado for the funeral. We rented a trailer and hauled my dad’s Mercury down...
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