Author: Mia

It’s not Christmas ’til I burn my fingers on hot, molten sugar-magma. Quote me.  My much older sister heralds HER holiday by prying the lid from an ornately festooned popcorn tin, eager ears tuned for the satisfying ‘pop’… we all have our own groundhogs.  For the twelfth year in a row, I spent an evening…

In Oregon, one does not simply select a Christmas tree from a parking lot… One must traipse through the woods (or, ahem, a tree-farm) wielding a saw, chop down a live conifer, and drag said conifer back to their abode like a proper lumberjack. We settled on a Nordman Fir this year, though Douglas is…

“… set apart the last Thursday of November next as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.” – Abe Lincoln Our extended family gathered ’round my much older sister’s long table for Thanksgiving again this year, to share our gratitude and feast like proper pilgrims. Though collectively…

T minus 8 days until Thanksgiving! We’re ready-freddie. My extended family’s busy mixin’ up some inventive stuffing variations in preparation for next week… this year, we plan to shake things up a bit for our holiday.  In the meantime, my much older sister and brother-in-law had a spare turkey lying around, and so invited us…

My Grandpa passed away a few weeks ago; we laid him to rest as a family and then this past weekend his loving wife (of 62 years!) hosted a public memorial in his honor. I still can’t believe he’s gone. Often, it feels like the women of our family direct this crazy circus (we do…

I love dress-up. I just do. I’m not sure what it says about me, but I’m glad my kids love it, too. The night before Halloween, Firstborn received a last-minute invite to a youth group costume party. She requested to go coordinated to her special “friend-boy” as Shaggy & Velma from Scooby Doo. In just…

Our school year’s off to a solid start. Activities are in full-swing and I’m racking up the mileage on my Jeep to prove it. Still, I’m grateful the bookends of our schoolweeks are relatively calm, mostly-at-home days (save for theatre class Mondays & Shakespeare Club Fridays) where we can tend to the meat & potatoes…

Ohhhh autumn… synonymous with bright foliage, garden harvests, pumpkin evvvverything, and, of course, Halloween. It’s fall, y’all.  We’ve been to the pumpkin patch twice already– once with our new homeschool co-op and again with our extended family, as per tradition. As for Halloween, we have a love/hate relationship… I love it for the dress-up, the…

Don’t go to Target with a broken heart. You’ll walk out having spent 200 and some-odd dollars on a cartfull of random trinkets you’d no idea you “needed.” My beloved grandfather passed away last week, and even though he’s been slowly slipping away for some time the finality of his death still turned our lives…