where I talk with my inside voice
Day four of our staycation took us to see the St. Louis Cathedral Basilica, a rather incongruous blend of Romanesque architecture and Byzantine art that took almost 70 years to complete. It houses one of the largest collections of mosaics in the world, all of which are stunning. The kids were impressed with the size of the space inside, and...
Josie’s castle / play table is almost done. In just a couple of hours this morning I was able to get a coat of primer on everything and assemble it in her room. She can’t wait to start playing with it, but I think I may need to take it back apart in order to finish painting it. I attached...
If I haven’t mentioned it before, I really like Sketchup. Yesterday I spent less than an hour designing a new play table for my daughter Josie, and tonight I spent about an hour cutting out the pieces. Talk about rapid prototyping! If it’s not obvious from the image, this table will sit in the corner of her room and be...
In almost every project around our house, we invariably reach the point where this phrase is uttered. It happens so often that it’s a running joke. Today, Father’s Day, was no exception. It began with us simply wanting to swap out the hangers in both of the kids’ closets. Noah’s clothes have gotten big enough that they don’t stay on...
It’s a typical St. Louis summer. We are barely into June and it’s already into the 90s, with a heat index above 100. So to beat the heat, it’s time to fill the pool (and upgrade our slide, thanks to Craigslist). Our humble little pool is barely big enough for the kids but this year we have another family member...
Day two of our staycation took us to see the St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Stadium. We watched Albert Pujols et al finish a three-game sweep of their long-time rivals the Chicago Cubs, defeating them 3-2 in the 10th inning. It turned out to be a beautiful day despite the forecasts of record heat and humidity, and though we were...
As a consequence of our canine commitments, an extended vacation this summer was not in the cards, so we decided to do a “staycation” this year. And since the kids haven’t seen many of the St. Louis landmarks, we figured this would be a good option for us. First up: a trip to the Arch. But we started with breakfast...
Today we made the trip to The Paw Pad to get our little goldendoodle named Ellie. Here’s a quick video of our first meeting, and there are a couple of photos from our trip home in my album.
We are pretty excited about the newest addition to our little family. Her name is Ellie (Noah picked the name) and she is now four weeks old. Only a few more weeks before we can pick her up! We haven’t told the kids yet, but they are going to be thrilled when they find out we are getting a dog....
The three most important people in my life came home from their trip to Florida, and I am so happy to see them. It was getting pretty lonely around here. Trips to the beach, trips to Gatorland — it sounds like they had a great time. I’ll share some photos soon. But for now I’m just happy to have my...
Today’s the first day of summer, and it felt like it too. Hotter’n Hades. I spent the day (and most of yesterday) doing yardwork — what was I thinking? This was a fairly productive weekend, but I didn’t get everything done that I wanted (as usual). I can’t believe the year is almost half over. The weeks and months just...
We celebrated Father’s Day a week early this year, and spent the day with the grandparents. Dixie got me the yard cart that I’ve had my eye on for a while, and the kids benefited from this purchase as they got a mini-hayride (minus the hay) around the yard before having fun in our mini water park. It’s not Oceans...
We just got back from our family vacation to Kansas City. It was a crazy busy week. We stayed at the Embassy Suites hotel on the Plaza. We hit a number of the sights, including Worlds of Fun and Oceans of Fun, which the kids thoroughly enjoyed. We also visited the Steamboat Arabia museum, which I found fascinating. A couple...
So I was probably ten years old the last time I was in Branson, Missouri. Everyone that I’ve talked to has told me that I wouldn’t recognize it, that it had become like Las Vegas. I guess maybe my expectations were too high because I can’t say that I was overly impressed. I can see the comparisons to Las Vegas,...
We bought this Cambridge model swingset from Sam’s last season on clearance and finally got around to assembling the beast this past weekend. If you buy one, you can plan on it taking a good 20 hours to assemble if you have only two people. I would recommend that you follow the instructions and take the time to sort and...
