It’s an amateur radio. That’s right, I’m a ham. I don’t participate avidly, having a couple of other things to do with my time, but I am part of an emergency communications net that covers our area. Why ham radio, on top of everything else we’re doing? Story time. On January 17, 1994, I was …

This is one of our more favoriter spots in the house. Here’s Abby in our reading loft, which sits above the little girls’ room where she, Natalie, and Sarah sleep. On the left you can see the ladder that leads up to it. Four 4-inch lag bolts hold each rung directly to the studs, and …

Sunday morning I was doing one of my favorite Sunday things: Driving to fulfill a church assignment in a distant town. It was early morning, the mountainsides were green and thick with trees, the jagged peaks bright with snow. I followed the river all the way up the valley, admiring the mountain maples bright with …

We’ve just survived another whirlwind week with the Missoula Children’s Theater. It’s always a highlight of the busy spring around here. Last Monday two college kids landed at the elementary school with a pickup truck full of props, backdrops, costumes, and scripts. Auditions were Monday after school, rehearsals start Tuesday, and by Saturday they all …

Out of our six new laying hens, this is the one (according to Jessica) that has the most personality. She calls her the Little Red Hen, or, in our acronymphilic household, the LRH. The day after they arrived last week, instead of staying cooped up (pun intended) in her chicken yard, the LRH promptly explored …

See, it’s taken me an entire week to document everything Jessica and I accomplished last Saturday. No wonder we’re tired. Maybe it’s not as big a deal as a tree house or a chicken coop, but it’s a medium-sized deal to me. I finally added a railing around our front porch. Now if I could …

With all the rain lately, it’s a good thing thing this is just a treehouse, since I haven’t had time to put a roof on it. You can see the ladder Emma built all by herself, and the decorative window at right really is symmetrical (I haven’t screwed in the side pieces yet). The whole …

Visible here are about 15% of her floral extravaganza, which in addition to this exists in four other large flowerbeds. This is besides the strawberry bed you see at back right, the blackberry patch, the rhubarb and raspberry patch, and the garden, which includes vegetables and fruit trees. After seven months of snow, she has …

First there was the drawing. This is how all my projects start. No, actually they start with reading something or talking to Jess* about a need. This one started with the fact that the kids don’t like to eat duck eggs if they can recognize them (scrambled or as part of a recipe? Fine), and …

I was out Thursday and Friday, so no blog posts. I’ve been at this company for over a decade and now get so much vacation time I can’t always remember to forewarn y’all when I’ll be out. Five weeks of vacation a year plus paid holidays, insurance, flexible spending, etc etc–let’s hear it for college …