In Santa Fe this spring, we saw the most fabulously-decorated succulent.  Thinking this photo might inspire some of you (it inspired us!) to hunt down old ornaments, CDs, and other waylaid tchtochkes, we had to share in time for the holidays.

Happy hunting!

Just a follow-up on how fantastic – fun, rewarding, helpful – volunteering with kids can be. 

Every year we wonder how to usher in the new year with little people in tow.  Whether we’re spending the whole New Year’s Eve with them, shipping them off to their grandparents, or doing a little of both, we always seem to be looking for fun ways to mark the occasion together and to make the changeover special.

So in the spirit of planning ahead so that we’re not stuck at 5 p.m. on December 31 wondering what in the world to do, here are some of our favorite ideas…

'Tis the Season…for running around like crazy, buying a gazillion gifts, putting in the effort to make everything just a little more special.  How about trying to slow down just a tad and spend some time focusing just on the giving?  Not just on giving gifts, but on giving time and energy to make a stranger’s holiday a little more special.  And on teaching your kids how to start doing just that.

We have such a hard time thinking of the perfect gift for the grandmothers in our lives.  It’s a challenge to really show them how much we love and appreciate them.  Add in the fact that they pretty much buy for themselves whatever they want, and we’ve got quite a quandary.

Well we’ve taken quite a hiatus.  But we’re back to sharing thoughts on making life with kids more fun (or really just on noticing the fun everyday and making the most of it all). 

So today we really should write something about Fat Tuesday or Presidents' Day or spring or celebrating something or other. But all we can do is relay a little story that we bet you might find familiar.

Lots of celebrating going on! This past Tuesday was "Dat Tuesday" in New Orleans, in honor of those terrific Saints. And this coming Tuesday is Fat Tuesday, ending several weeks of Mardi Gras-style debauchery.

Happy Chinese New Year! Since it lands this year on the same day as Valentine's Day, we're going to have a Chinese New Year/Valentine dinner. Instead of our traditional Feburary 14 heart-shaped pizza and chocolate, we're having Chinese dumplings, wonton soup, and lo mein - long noodles for long life. Plus something Valentines-y and chocolate at the end.
 

This past weekend, 25 6- and 7-year old girls joined us for an early Saturday evening "party in your pj's" bash.  Freeze Dance (led by the daddies) was a hit, as were the pinata, silly string, headband decorating, and pizza making.  Whew.  

but it's right around the corner. Punxsutawney Phil, the famous weather-predicting groundhog, saw his shadow today and predicts six more weeks of winter. That's fine, because we're starting a spring garden right in our kitchens.  

It's hard to get lunches right. Grownups want healthy, kids want yummy (and usually nothing that will draw a comment from their lunch buddies). How to make everyone happy?

On a quick trip to the grocery last Monday to pick up something nondescript to make for dinner, we ran into what the store called a "Citrus Fest", or what we called a gigantic push to sell oranges of all kinds. It worked.