The young hobbit inscribes his sword with elvish runes. Our family has never really done much for Halloween, but ever since our church started throwing this great masquerade party every year we’ve started dressing up for it. This year the kids started planning costumes a month ago and I kept […]
Read MoreMonth: October 2011
For When You Feel Powerless
A friend’s daughter spent the last several weeks in the hospital because she told her mom she was thinking about how to kill herself. She is a sweet, bright, beautiful girl and that she is able to believe that the world would be better without her in it just kills […]
Read MoreAdornment
All morning, whenever I sit still for her, Little is making me a princess. She inserts hair pins at random, and brushes and pulls. Bangles and bracelets pile up on my wrists, necklaces stack up under my chin.”You look so beautiful mommy”, she says. “You have to keep your princess […]
Read More10 years old
It was your auntie Ana who pointed it out to me. “You have your first double digit child.” I hadn’t really thought about it. One whole decade I have been a mama. By the end of the next you will be an adult. It’s really brief this childrearing thing, only […]
Read MorePretty Happy Real
Pretty – Flower girl dress with the sash I sewed. Funny – Bam Bam decided to eat his little friend’s shoe last week at church. I believe he’s trying to demonstrate his slavish devotion to her in exchange for her cereal snacks. Happy – This is everyone about a minute after […]
Read MoreAn Embarrassment of Riches
They are all very loud, standing on the outside edge of the window sill, just behind this couch I sit in. There are bird sounds and many characters acting out voices and I wonder if today is another failure. Should I be letting them just run wild now, at 2:42pm […]
Read Morethe story of moonscape
A couple of years ago, when Aaron and I were first starting The Charis Project Melissa, the daughter of one of our board members, came to us and said, “I’d really like to help you guys out. I don’t have a lot of money but here are a few things […]
Read MoreThe Horrible Weight of Freedom
photo by aparejador– Used under CC licence Sometimes when I’m hurtling down the freeway at 70 miles an hour, all 4 children tucked into seats in the back and the road curves slightly and I feel the tug of inertia against the change in direction I wonder at the fact […]
Read MoreEntrepreneurship
I don’t know how clear it is from the photo but that guava tree is bent more than double under the weight of all it’s fruit. Ever one to get the kids to do something I would rather not, I told them they should pick it all and sell it […]
Read MoreA Day Out
Rosie from http://ourmothersdaughters.blogspot.com invited us to join her at the botanical gardens yesterday. It is a very interesting place, and smelled divine. It sprinkled on us just a little, which was exciting for my California children. We’ll go back. Thanks Rosie for inviting us. (I have no idea how this will look. […]
Read More