• Family - RemoteDance - Throwback - Travel

    10 Years Ago

    January 23, 2026 - By 

    The current social media trend is to share flashback photos from 2016. Looking through my photo albums from ten years ago, it’s kind of crazy to see what a wild ride it’s been. My blog was on hiatus – in fact, I wouldn’t re-start it until our official move away from Arizona in 2017. Since I don’t have a lot of entries documenting those years, I thought it would be fun to re-visit them in a series of posts. For this introduction, I will remind you all of the Great European Family Adventure, which took place in 2016. It can…

  • Family - Parenting - Throwback

    Create Your Cozy

    December 10, 2025 - By 

    The “old people’s social media site” recently shared with me a photo from 10 years ago. This Christmas setup was 4 houses ago, in Arizona. What a trip (literally, and figuratively) to think how many fireplaces we’ve hung stockings from. How many trees we’ve decorated and situated in how many different floor plans, and how many holidays filled with joy that we’ve been blessed with. After that house there was the farmhouse in Iowa (the fireplace is just outside the frame): And then there was the Kansas City house: And now, Wisconsin. Which, arguably, is the coziest and most perfectly…

  • Throwback

    November 26th, 2003

    November 26, 2023 - By 

    I found this list I wrote, twenty years ago, about my favorite modern conveniences. And I honestly have to say, I WOULDN’T CHANGE A THING. I would not put smartphones on that list, even now. (Although telephones in general are a good one. As is email. All of which were definitely a thing that existed in 2003. But even knowing their integral function in today’s society, I’d still rank them below “pasteurization” and “modern surgical techniques”. And please – let’s just forget social media and leave YouTube for the instructional videos only, hmmm?) Also PS GET OFF MY LAWN. Only…

  • Family - Throwback

    Same Beach, 20 years later

    October 16, 2023 - By 

    Sometimes life is WILD. From 2001-2003 I lived in Davis, California, attending the university there. My close friend, roommate, and co-worker was a gal we’ll call Jennifer. We graduated, she moved to Portland, Oregon, and I moved down to Los Angeles. Eventually, I got a career that wasn’t waiting tables and I moved to Washington state. In 2004, Jennifer was getting married. We’d kept in touch and I was honored to be in her wedding, which would take place on the Oregon Coast at her fiancée’s uncle’s house. So I packed my bag, printed out my MapQuest directions to the…

  • Throwback

    The Taste of Memories

    September 21, 2023 - By 

    Our brain, that clever, complicated organ, is a keeper of many mysteries. So many mysteries, in fact, that I’m not even going to attempt to list a tenth of them. I just want to talk about one of them: the link between memory, scent, and taste. Did you know there’s a word for that? The moment when a certain smell or flavor triggers a memory? It’s called a Proustian moment. And lest you think I had that little tidbit just hidden up my sleeve waiting for the right blog post… I didn’t. A quick scan of the internet led me…

  • Throwback - Travel

    The Vast Nostalgia of Addresses Past

    March 13, 2023 - By 

    I have moved a lot of times and lived a lot of places. Different cities, different states, different countries. And whenever I re-visit a place that I have lived before, I expect it to have changed. But on a couple of occasions, it hasn’t. Which, oddly, is even worse. You would think that going back to a place which remains the same would be like dipping your toes into a warm pool of nostalgia. Oh! Here is the same wallpaper that I stared at while I sat at this same kitchen table and ate buttery cinnamon toast from the same…

  • Throwback

    The Background Details

    January 23, 2023 - By 

    Sometimes the best parts of old photos are the stories they hide in the details. The stories that only the photographer and the photographed might remember. Take, for instance, this photo of me at our kitchen table, circa 1985 or 1986. I can still feel the padded vinyl of that checkered tablecloth. The doll? Her name was Polly and she was my absolute favorite. I lost her once in a grocery store and was rather inconsolable, until some nice lady found her and turned her into the manager. That cat ledge! What a thing that I took for granted as…

  • Family - Throwback

    Canoe Manoo

    April 29, 2022 - By 

    The Kansas City Zoo has a program to sell composted animal manure to the public. This program is called, aptly, “Zoo Manoo.” So you understand where I’m coming from with the title for this Flashback Friday blog post. Canoe Manoo: AKA The World’s Shittiest Canoe Float. The year was 2013. The Husband and I went up to Iowa to celebrate the 4th of July. Baby A-man took his first ever flight at just 5 months old. And then there was the canoe float. We had some friends from Arizona also fly to Iowa to celebrate the 4th, and participate in…

  • Fun - Throwback

    That time I met Shaquille O’Neal at a Denny’s

    July 19, 2021 - By 

    As we’re currently in the last games of the NBA finals, it seems like an appropriate time to reminisce about that one time I met Shaq at a Denny’s restaurant. The year was 2002. Shaquille O’Neal was a pretty big deal. I mean, he’s still a pretty big deal but this is the same year he was named NBA Finals MVP for the third straight year. Shaq played for the LA Lakers at this point in his career, and after a 7-game series, they had beaten the Sacramento Kings and won the Western Conference Finals. The date – May 27,…

  • Fun - Marriage - Throwback

    How We Met

    December 22, 2020 - By 

    The boring version is that Chris and I met at work in Arizona, in the early months of 2006, dated for about three years and then got married. The more interesting version is that a guy I barely knew from work randomly asked me to fly out to Iowa with him as his date for his 10-year high school reunion. And I’d meet my future-mother-in-law when I stayed at her house for an extended weekend, where I’d also meet all of his siblings and attend his brother’s college graduation. And the first time I’d meet my future father-in-law it would…