One of the first chores our children have learned is to put things “IN.” If we tell a child, “Jacob, can you put it IN?” where “it” is his toy car and “IN” is the garbage, I mean the toy car basket, he’ll jump to it. The kids love putting things IN. This is especially …

Long, long ago when I was considering trading in my old Camry for a four-wheel-drive something or other, I wondered if I should buy an old pickup truck. For various reasons, I opted not to; and though I’m glad we have the Jeep, we’ve had to make do occasionally. For example, when we built our …

Jess and I are super-hyper-overachievers, and with the first half-dozen of our children we thought we could handle it all while our children sat around reading The Lightning Thief (where does he keep the lightning once he’s stolen it, by the bye?) or Harry Potter for the 17th time. But with seven children, we can’t …

I was so proud of the work I got done this sunny Saturday (to be duly noted in coming days), and so proud that I had all that wood dried out and ready to go, and so proud of my kids’ hard work loading up the old woodshed, that I didn’t notice their woodpile starting …