Okay. It is no secret that I am obsessed with food. Not in a bad way, either. I don’t have food issues. I am not afraid to eat. Nor is my husband. And we’ve passed that trait on to our kids. We love food.
I adore everything about food. Shopping for it, cleaning it, preparing it, [...]

Yesterday was the first day of school for Pea. She’s been in school before, but never like this. Seriously. Until I had a kid in a school with a dress code, a uniform dress code, I was clueless. “Oh, uniforms are great. The answer to a parent’s prayers. Homogeneous toddlers? Super-awesome.”
Slap me now. What did [...]

Pea has been asking me for weeks now to make these little paper ‘Kelly’ bags for her. A friend forwarded me the link to their location, on the Hermes website. Click on the link, and go to the image of the little white bag with the orange scissors, and click on it. It’s in the [...]

How many times have you been invited to someone’s home, and you’ve brought along a bottle of wine? We’ve done that. A lot. And I don’t know the first thing about wine. I really don’t. And that’s rather sad, when you consider that my uncle ran a Napa Valley Vineyard. And now owns a successful [...]

Last night, I had the brilliant idea of letting the girls make their own pizzas for dinner. I had a couple of small Boboli pizza crusts in the bread box, which I always have on hand, for those surprise pop-in visits from other kids in the neighborhood. So I pulled them out, along with a [...]

Have you checked out the Smart Television Alliance website lately? I’ve written about them before, I’ve written for them before. And I like what they do. A lot. They are a “coalition of national nonprofit organizations united by a shared commitment to improving what our nation’s children see on television.” Yes, I took that right [...]

Anyone who knows me will tell you that my life, the lives of my children, my dogs, my husband – they all thrive on routines. One common routine, that is tweaked throughout the day, for each member of our family. There’s wake-up, breakfast, getting ready for camp, grooming, packing lunch boxes, errands, outside time, lunchtime, [...]

Okay, I know I’m really late on these tubtrugs. But I have good reason. They were everywhere. For the longest time. And I got so sick of seeing them. And looked the other way. All the while? Had bath toys that could’ve used one. And dog toys that needed one. And outside toys. They all [...]

I picked up a new book for Pea last week. I’d heard good things about it. And it’s about horses. So, you know. No-brainer. It’s called “The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses.” It’s an older book, a sweet story about a Native American girl who communed with horses.
As has become practice in recent weeks, I [...]

Okay, I am in trouble here. Serious trouble. With a capital ‘T.’
When we moved here in mid-February, we were coming from a climate that was already quite warm. Like in the 80s kind of warm. And it only gets hotter from there. Summers in Fort Worth are brutal. The only time to take your kid [...]

It’s that time of the year. School starts soon. Pea has less than two weeks left of summer camp, and then she begins preschool the following Monday. Just one weekend to make the transition from summer fun to school uniforms.
Just as I did last year when she started pre-preschool, I ordered Pea a new backpack [...]

One of my biggest regrets in life is that I didn’t get the painting / drawing gene. I cannot draw a doodle to save my life. And it wouldn’t seem like such a big deal, except that Pea is always asking me to draw her this or that, and I try, I really do, but [...]

Ahh… bedtime routines. They have been my saving grace with the girls. The cornerstone of their lives, if you will. I nailed a good one down, early on with Pea, since passed down to include Coco, and it’s stuck with us through three years of goodnights. There have been tweaks along the way, the largest [...]

Do you remember Madeline? The sweet little redheaded French girl? As a kid, I adored her. She was so small and sweet and fierce. A winning combination. We had all of the books, it was all I ever wanted to read. As I grew, I discovered other “sassy and smart” girls to look up to. [...]

In order to make these six weeks sans husband fly by, I just knew that I was going to have to book up the family’s social calendar. So it’s been a long string of play-dates and barbecues these past two weeks. It’s been a lot of fun, somewhat exhausting, and totally delightful to feel such [...]