I’m currently in Nashville at the Blissdom conference.  Doug texted me this morning with this message from Brenna:
“I want to add an “e” to the end of my name.
But don’t worry- it’s silent.”

The past few days have been busy here at Casa Geek.  Apparently life gets hectic about Christmas time…
Last week the girls both had Christmas programs at preschool.  Yes, Christmas programs.  Caelan’s class began by saying the Pledge of Allegiance.  Songs were sung (Brenna puts a lot of emotion into her songs and ends each with [...]

Five years ago tonight was a Monday.  Doug and I had spent Sunday in the Amana Colonies.  I didn’t enjoy it much as I was due on the 27th.  I didn’t feel much like roaming the shops, I couldn’t enjoy the wine samples and the German food just didn’t agree with me.
Early Tuesday morning I [...]

Not my girls.  Oh, we have lots of toys, most of them gifts from birthdays and Christmas, but only a few of those hold the girls’ attention longer than a few minutes.  But we really don’t need them when we have…
…a collapsible pink laundry basket.  Caelan amused herself for an hour with this.
And what was [...]

We spent Sunday at the Iowa State Fair courtesy of Got Milk?and the Milk Mustache Mobile Tour.  We even had our own milk mustache photos taken.
Lovely, aren’t we?  They had a nice set up with free chair massages, ice cream shakes and a dietitian.
You may remember that I had three “Got Milk” goodie bags [...]

Brenna is pretty computer savvy.  It’s actually kind of scary.  She is really good at figuring out what needs to be done even though she’s not reading a lot yet.
The newest game we’ve played online is Pocketville.  She loved creating her avatar, picking out her pet, playing the games and exploring  the “world”.
Pocketville is a [...]

My sister’s family has been visiting grandparents out of state this past week so we have been dog-sitting for them.  (I wish they could return the favor when we go out of town but, well, you’ll see why they don’t in a minute.)
Zeus is a Yorkie and quite used to being overlooked by my sister’s [...]

Mine is. And we have a sign to prove it. As you enter my town (listed first on the 2008 Playful Cities page- it helps to begin with the letter “A”) you are greeted by it.  And I’ve noticed it often.  In fact my cousin commented on it a week ago, “The sign [...]

Brenna has been very adamant about growing her hair long.  She’s got the thickest hair…  And lots of it.  But she deals with the brushing and the tangles to have that long braid or the fluffy pony tail.  Or, her favorite, the hair that “swings when she runs”.
Today’s event changed all that.  You see, today [...]

It’s circus week at preschool…

Not that we need a costume to act like a clown…

The girls had last week off but this week begins our new summer schedule- which include school!
Yes, I am “that” mom… The one who wishes the schools around here had a year-round schedule. Surely I’m not the only mom who struggles to find amusing things to do on a daily basis that don’t [...]

I buy the majority of the girls clothing at garage sales or consignment shops.  I want them to look nice but I just can’t bring myself to spend a lot of money on clothes they are going to grow out of so quickly.  Luckily I live in an area where other people don’t have the [...]

Caelan has preschool once a week for 1 1/2 hours. That’s not really enough time to go home and get anything done before picking her up so Brenna and I usually run errands. Today, however, we had no errands to run.
My first instinct was to pack up the small laptop and head to [...]

I’ve been bad about the promised updates and we’ve been so busy that I am far, far behind on our travel adventures at Have Kid Will Travel. So I wanted to share this photo of the girls from our visit to Salem a couple weekends ago. We stopped in the Maritime Museum and [...]

Today we toured Plymouth, Massachusetts. It was incredibly cool- we may go back tomorrow to see more & go on a whale watch. Unless we go to the Cape…
We wore the girls out; we toured the Mayflower II, Plimoth Plantation, Jenney Grist Mill & then we took a walking tour of Plymouth (more [...]