Category: Updates

We meal plan. We plan breakfast, lunch, and dinner (and usually desserts and snacks too). With a few exceptions we six eat all our meals together at the table, and have for nearly 5 years- when Kevin transitioned to working from home full time. Pre-pandemic – I would sit down with our calendar and plan…

We like to play. We love to explore and adventure. We don’t like to mop floors or scrub showers. To be able to do all the fun things we first have to get through the list of ‘must do’ things. Our kids don’t have a daily/weekly chore list, and they don’t get an allowance. The…

**Here is a copy of our semi-annual family update letter. ** Dear Friends and Family— Last year was full of travel and adventure—we all traveled to Europe in the fall, and bought a house in December, leaving little time for a holiday letter. This year was less traditionally hectic, although a house of six is…

January 1, 2021- The first day of the new year. Usually a time for reflecting on what we have accomplished in the previous year and what we are looking forward to in the coming months. And while we certainly tried to incorporate those highlights into our day, it also felt like 2021 was deserving of…

Given the rising COVID-19 case numbers, we opted not to do a lot of the normal winter activities that fill our days—skiing (downhill and cross-country), snowshoeing, and ice skating. However, we still wanted to be able to take advantage of outside time as much as possible this winter. We have some hills on our property…

A year ago today we were homeless for a few hours. That morning we sold our house on North Oak and we didn’t close on our current home until later in the day. That meant that for a few hours in the middle of the day we didn’t have an address of our own. The…

Last week we shared how we did the ‘Great Garage Swap’. What we didn’t share was that the barn shed roof was in disrepair. We knew this when we purchased the home, but this summer we focused our energies on projects to improve our fun experiences – docks, steps and boat racks – instead of…

Yesterday, we did what we call The Great Garage Swap, which is where we unload all of our winter gear from the storage shed (nicknamed “the barn”), load it back up with all of our summer stuff (bikes, scooters, etc) and then get all of our winter gear organized in the garage. We were under…

This year, since COVID has impacted our ability to go trick-or-treating and do many of the other fall activities that we typically enjoy, we decided to spend some of the money that we weren’t spending on those other things on some obscenely large pumpkins to turn into jack-o-lanterns. Happy Halloween!

We have a floating dock that is made from the bottom of a pontoon boat. A few weeks ago, in preparation for winter, we disconnected the gangway, loaded it on top of the floating dock, hooked up an electric trolling motor, and all hopped on the boat for a lazy ride upriver to the boat…

A few weeks ago a good friend turned us onto a set of nearby trails that are under-utilized. Which is great for my COVID sensibilities. Most days we never see anyone – in the parking lot or on the miles of trails that twist and turn. As if I needed another reason to like these…

Joyous Equinox, everyone! Today is the first day of Autumn, and the weather here has started to turn cold. Our preparations for winter are well under way. Our house has a wood burning insert in the fireplace, which is optimized for producing heat while minimizing the amount of warm air from our house that goes…