If you’ll remember, the day Como Conservatory cut the ribbon on the brand new Ordway Gardens addition, people were still crunching through snow to get to it. I’m glad I waited for a balmy afternoon in May to bring the kids for a run-through. Okay, truthfully it was cloudy and sprinkling on and off but [...]

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 [...]

To celebrate birthdays in Emily’s kindergarten class, the birthday child simulates a walk around the sun. One orbit is tread for each year of the child’s life, while the teacher reads aloud personal milestones supplied by parents. It was a fun coincidence that the night before Emily’s birthday walk we attended one of Como Planetarium’s [...]

I tried to look on the bright side when our toddler decided my day was going to begin at 3:00 a.m. At least there wasn’t any chance of turning off the alarm at 6:00 and sleeping through the bright-and-early Rainbow Foods Easter egg hunt! We’re personal friends of their Easter Bunny so I had promised [...]

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 [...]

My son came home from the Science Museum last weekend and I was expecting a graphic review of the Body Worlds exhibit he’d just toured. Instead, he thrust a membership card at me: “I opened a Collectors’ Corner account!” he announced, then prattled on about the collecting and trading of natural objects at the Museum. [...]

A family tradition that dates back years before the word “blog” entered our collective lexicon. Not quite as far as the original Highland Games of Scotland, of course, but encompassing many aspects of them: the skirl of bagpipes, swishing of kilts and family members distantly connected to those ancient Scottish clans. The highlight of A [...]

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 [...]

So I was musing in my last post about the growing concurrent exhaustion and excitement that comes with having kids in extra-curricular activities. Excitement edged out yesterday at the Music & Melody Makers event offered by Minnesota Youth Symphonies. It was a joy to watch my girls try their hand at a dozen or so [...]

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 [...]