We are hosting Thanksgiving at our home in a couple days. We have never hosted a holiday before – our city home just isn’t big enough to accommodate our large extended family.  But, this year some of my sisters are with their in-laws, so the “smaller” crowd of eight adults and six kids can squeeze […]

Mack recently celebrated his 4th birthday, and with the arrival of Baby Ben my friend Amy (took pity on me and) generously offered to host a joint birthday party for her son and Mack at her home.  She shares my sensibilities when it comes to kids parties: keep it fun, low-key and offer booze to […]

We’ve finally settled into the new school year routine. Of course, all summer the kids were up at 6:30, and now that we have to get to school in the morning I have to drag them out of bed at 7 – go figure!  But, other than that life is moving along pretty good. Evie […]

As I’ve mentioned here before, I am not a particularly crafty person.  While I enjoy doing most things on my own, projects with the kids are usually quite simple but satisfying.  On grey afternoons we keep busy with tools from our craft tower and whatever can be re-purposed from around the house. So, when I […]

Mack is an enigma to me. He is a newly 3 rambunctious and energetic boy, and he functions at top speed ALL THE TIME.  At his age, I was happy to spend every afternoon playing My Little Ponies with my three sisters, so having a young fella of my own is still new to me.  […]

I recently read about a study that found nearly half of all moms suffer from Pinterest stress. Apparently, 42 percent of mothers worry that they are not crafty or creative enough for their growing families.  They worry about keeping up with what others are doing, and the self-induced pressure for perfection keeps many moms up […]

Last week Evie came home from school with a homework assignment from her wonderful pre-school teachers: build a leprechaun trap. Chris had to work late every night last week, so the leprechaun trap gave the kids and I something fun to work on after dinner. I had never heard of a leprechaun trap before, but […]

Chicago (finally) got a bit of winter weather yesterday.  The sleet started around 10 am, and the snow continued through the night. For this lifelong Midwesterner, however, the few inches on the ground this morning were but a pittance. Mack loves playing in the snow, but yesterday’s weather was wet and icy so we stayed […]

As I’ve written about before, my Mack is a force to be reckoned with.  He needs to keep busy or else he’s causing trouble.  When I saw a recipe on Pinterest for beads made out of pasta I knew it would be a fun activity for us to do together.  He and I had the […]

Chris and I have had an ongoing discussion about toys for the past six weeks. We have plenty of them in our house. And with Christmas on the way we’re about to have plenty more added. But, the problem is that our kids just don’t really play with many of their toys. Mack loves cars, […]