where I talk with my inside voice
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...
That’s the look. That’s why parents enjoy Christmas morning so much. On its initial release date Aug 1, the new Lego Grand Piano set sold out within minutes. It took me several weeks of monitoring Lego’s web site and two trips to the Lego store to get one, but it was all worth it to see that look. Can’t wait...
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...
Foul weather prevented us from going to cut a tree this year, for the first time in a long time. But the kids put up the artificial tree and they did a great job decorating it, so it didn’t really matter that much. We also didn’t go to the symphony this year, which I now regret, so I’ll plan on...
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...
We have spent the last several weekends going over to my parents’ house in O’Fallon and going through everything we find there to see if there is anything worth keeping. Certainly there are plenty of things, like photo albums and books and other mementos, but I am somewhat surprised that there isn’t more. We have brought home three truckloads of...
There are a lot of reason why I love that we homeschool. Here’s another. I gave the kids a project this year – to plan our fall vacation. I drew a circle on the map around St. Louis that represented how far we could drive in 4-5 hours. I told them we could go anywhere inside that circle (which included...
This was a rough week. I got my dad moved down to El Dorado Springs. He has moved in with his sister Marlene, for which I am grateful because I’m not sure how much longer he can actually live on his own without help. So it’s nice knowing that he has someone else there in case of an emergency. He’s...
