My comrade over at Family Fun Twin Cities did a great feature on the Family Fun Tuesdays series at Caponi Art Park. So inspiring was she that I finally decided to quit putting off the trip (all the way to Eagan) and go the next open Tuesday on the calendar (which happened to be today). [...]

TourDad was on a mission. I had left the house at 8:30 a.m. for a bit of a retreat with my own mom, and he knew he had a slim window of time in which to carry out his plan. So he rounded up the four kids, hauled them over to the ArtScraps Reuse Store [...]

Just the thought of venturing into one of the Walker Art Center’s pristine galleries accompanied by my four young children can bring on heart palpitations. I’m on pins and needles the whole time. One kid’s on my hip, another I’ve got by the hand, and the older two I’m constantly muttering at to use EYES [...]

I’m not the crafty mom who’s got Pinterest bookmarked and a space in the house devoted to creative, messy fun. That’s why I love places like Heartfelt. They supply the great ideas and provide the perfect environment for carrying them out. I brought my 3-year-old daughter into the Linden Hills shop today for one of [...]

Looking down at my calendar, I realize we haven’t had a wide-open Saturday in front of us for months. Tomorrow marks one week since hockey season has wrapped. Our winter break vacation is in the books. No immediate maintenance needs to be done on the house, the cabin, the cars. Heck, we can do anything [...]

The first time I heard about Leonardo’s Basement my daughter was opening a Christmas gift from her cousin. I recognized the doll’s dress immediately – an impressive copy of the traditional Swedish costume her American Girl doll wears for the holiday including the beribboned head wreath with six candles! My niece had made the entire [...]

As we continue to plow through winter, the question this Saturday is about snow: ditch it or embrace it? I could go either way, so I’ll leave it up to the kids to choose. On second thought, the outcome of that is not hard to predict: my artsy girls would insist upon Free First Saturday [...]

Balance and moderation are a couple key terms that come to mind when I’m thinking about extra-curricular activities for the kids. However, we’re only a couple years into having multiple school-aged children and I can clearly see the writing on the wall. Even if we limited each of the four kids to two activities in [...]

The girls and I popped in the MacPhail early childhood CD on our way over to Minneapolis this morning. We had hopes the Free Family Music Series concert might feature some of our favorite tunes off the disc – and wanted to be prepared to sing backup. Our rehearsal paid off. The girls were delighted [...]

The Minnesota State Fair’s Progress Center was wall-to-wall books today courtesy of the Annual Twin Cities Book Festival. Those who didn’t tow children along might have enjoyed the live readings, browsed for books or met with local authors. Those who did bring the kids probably found themselves looking longingly over their shoulders at the literature [...]