Joe Canadian

Lisa writes: Just in case anybody missed the Molson reference, please watch this. Over and over again.

Canadian Wednesday

Lisa writes: We went to Washington State last week and took a two-day side trip up to Canada. Canada is like a parallel universe. A very polite, well-ordered, clean parallel universe.

Tom's kid graduated

Lisa writes: After three years of weekly tutoring, Tom's tutee, Fiacre, graduated from high school today. Fiacre and his family came to Virginia from the Central African Republic through a refugee program in 2006. At the same time, Tom had volunteered with a local program to tutor a high school student once a week. We went out to his school for the graduation ceremony today. It was the usual: excited teenagers and their families, trapped in a gymnasium with slightly long-winded speakers, and the occasional rogue beach ball bouncing through the crowd.

Fiacre is the oldest of four, soon to be five, kids. His mom is expecting a baby boy in August. I think Fiacre will be a good example to his little siblings.

Tom writes: I was really surprised at how moving it was when all the graduating seniors starting filing in. There was a palpable sense of excitement in the air, a mix of joy and tears. Or maybe that was just me. As I watched the "kids" animated expressions, I kept going back to a conversation I had with Fiacre just yesterday as he gave me the tickets we would need to get into the event. He was telling me that all of a sudden he was realizing that he had a lot of hard choices to make: choices about school, long term career planning, short term job opportunities, etc. Up until now he had really been looking forward to graduating, but now he was not so sure about it - life was going to get a lot harder, as he saw it. Transitions.

So for Fiacre: You are going to do great. You have a good sense of who you are and a contagious enthusiasm for life. These will carry you far. Congratulations.

Empty nest

Lisa writes: Something bad happened. Saturday, three eggs. Today, none. Not a shell, not a sign of them. A crow? A blue jay? A magpie? Could have been any one of them -- they are all in our neighborhood every day. They are all known to eat other birds' eggs. Where did the momma bird go? I think she flew off to another place to recover and rest and wait for another summer.

Egg Three

Lisa writes: Egg Three!

Egg Two

Lisa writes: Egg Two!

Egg One

Lisa writes: Egg One!

Lisa's dad

Lisa writes: The other day, my mom emailed and said, "Copy and paste that story from your blog into an email and send it to your dad to read. He doesn't 'do' blogs."

I'd been wondering what to write about next...

Things You Should Know About Lisa's Dad (That Are Perfectly Safe to Post Here Because He Won't Read Them)

* Lisa's dad has given her a hard time her whole life because she hates and avoids catsup. It was with wonder and surprise -- and not a little righteous indignation -- that Lisa learned only last year that her dad hates and avoids chunks of cooked tomato. You know: in chunky spaghetti sauce, chili, salsa. We were eating dinner with my parents -- a dinner I had cooked, by the way -- and I watched him carefully separate the tomato chunks out of the pasta, one by one. I asked my mom, "How have I never known this before?" and she said, "I never made him anything with tomato chunks."

* Lisa's dad's first love was electronics. He wired his house for sound when he was a teenager. He used stereo wire to hook up speakers in every room. His parents thought that was cute and clever. What his parents did not know was that he had also hooked up microphones in every room and would sit in his back bedroom eavesdropping on the grown-ups' conversations. I asked, "What did you hear?" He said, "Not much. My parents were boring."

* Lisa's dad was in the Air Force during Viet Nam and was stationed in Thailand where he once saw a local guy eat an enormous beetle. This story is much better when Lisa's dad tells it.

* When Lisa's dad was a little kid, he once tried to ride a sheep. It had a big, flat, woolly back that seemed made to order for a fun ride around the yard. The sheep immediately ran him into a tree. The ambulance taking him to the hospital got hit by another car in an intersection, injuring the ambulance driver, and a second ambulance had to come take them both to the hospital. They were both ok.

* Lisa's dad is kind of afraid of roosters.

RESPONSE FROM LISA'S DAD (Mom tattled on me):

Anyone with a medical background knows that hot stewed tomatoes cause CANCER. The same goes for coconut and rhubarb. The rhubarb companies try to cover up the fact that many people have strangled to death after chewing and trying to swallow rhubarb.. 1/2 stays in the mouth and the other 1/2 goes down to the stomach with unbreakable strings connecting them together.

The sheep story and the ambulance story are actually two different stories. But I liked your version better.

Thanks for thinking about me. You've got more of my journal on your blog than I've written in 62 years.

Turdus migratorius

Lisa writes: The robins are back! We're not sure if this is the same pair or not. It was supposed to be Tom's job to draw the Sharpie mohawk on their heads.* After the first batch of babies flew away last month, we just left the nest in the hanging plant. It was a conversation piece. But this morning, Tom looked out the bathroom window and saw an adult sitting in the nest, turning around and around like she was sizing it up. I checked the nest after she left and there was new grass lining the bottom. It looks like we're going to have another batch of babies! But, wait, do robins have more than one litter clutch a year?

Quick, Robin! To the Internet!

Mating season from April to September. Will often choose the same mate year after year. Robins will reuse nests from the previous year, sometimes building another nest on top of the old one. The female makes the nest in 2-6 days. First clutch is laid in April or May, between 2 to occasionally 7 eggs. Incubation is 12 days. Nesting is 13-16 days. The young are fed an average of 100 meals a day, mostly before noon. When the fledglings leave the nest, the father takes full charge of the brood and stays with the young for another week or two. Meanwhile, the female prepares for a second brood, building or repairing the nest. The next clutch may be started about 40 days after the first egg of the year, sometimes with three clutches in a year. Article here.

Excellent baby pics here.


* Inside joke. My little sister, Debbie, is currently working on a wildlife project where they catch and weigh bats to track the health of the colony. Before they release each bat, they mark its head with a permanent marker stripe -- a mohawk, she calls it -- to make sure they're not just catching the same slow bat over and over again.

The sky is falling

Tom writes: We have some big squirrels on the roof today!

Lisa writes: It's a toss up as to which is going to take us out first: the evil squirrels or that monsterous oak tree.

Tom writes: The good thing is that we can take the oak tree on and win an absolute victory. But squirrels, that's another story.

Lisa writes: We've proven we can take 'em out one at a time with the Havaheart trap ... But they'll just keep coming back in greater numbers, like that fight scene in The Matrix where the Agent Smiths just keep coming and coming. Watch that, and then imagine it with squirrels. That would be us.

Tom writes: Yup. But perhaps even more tedious!

Lisa writes: We're doomed.

Easter chicks, the update

Lisa's mom writes: "For those of you who did not get in on the continuing saga of the Easter Chicks, I just wanted to share. This picture was taken the day after Debbie's wedding, May 3rd. The cute little baby Easter chicks born about 2 months ago are now turning into teenagers....

"This picture says it all. I e-mailed Breanna tonight to ask how the chicks were doing. Breanna (age 11) replied, 'Heh, I just got your email 3 minutes ago! We actually gave our chickens away, because if we built a gate and the dogs would try to get them and if the chickens were in too much distress they wouldn't lay eggs!'"

Memorial Day: One more thing

Lisa writes: In addition to buying the new bed and bedframe, we put old socks over all of its feet so they wouldn't scratch the wood floor. It looks silly. But apparently we can't help ourselves. Our credit rating is too good:

From The New York Times article, "What Does Your Credit Card Company Know About You?"

"People who bought carbon-monoxide monitors for their homes or those little felt pads that stop chair legs from scratching the floor almost never missed payments. Anyone who purchased a chrome-skull car accessory or a “Mega Thruster Exhaust System” was pretty likely to miss paying his bill eventually."

Memorial Day

Lisa writes: Over the long Memorial Day weekend, we helped friends move, bought a new bed, went to church, babysat my nephew, went to a concert by the Marine Corps Band followed by fireworks, went to Arlington National Cemetary, had lunch with Tom's mom, mowed the lawn, watched baby bluejays leave the nest for the first time, planted some plants, and made a pizza.

Baby bluejays

Lisa writes: While the robins moved in on our porch, a pair of bluejays moved into the neighbor's carport. Here they are a day or two before they left the nest. I was actually out in the yard mowing the lawn when the first one decided to jump for it. Not good fliers, these babies. Their first flight was more like a frantic, wing-flapping fall. They managed to get themselves out to the backyard after maybe 30 minutes of effort. I read that at this point, the father takes over almost complete responsibility for the brood. He will herd them to safe spots, flying back and forth between the babies constantly for about two weeks until they are big enough to fend for themselves. It's sort of like how your mom mostly takes care of you when you're little, but when you leave for college and need money, you call dad.

Waste not, want not

Lisa writes: A friend gave me some goodies from her garden. What should I do with a whole bunch of rosemary and oregano? Any recommendations?

Bye, bye, birdies

Lisa writes: Here are the little chicks on Thursday. (I think that one on the left and I need to have a talk about his attitude.)



And here they were Friday morning.



And here's what I found when I got home from work Friday evening.



Flown the nest. I don't think the parents had to kick them out; from the way they were balancing on the edge and flapping their wings Friday morning, they were rarin' to go.

Happy 23rd birthday, Debbie

Lisa writes: Happy birthday to Debbie, the cutest and roundest-headed baby in our family.

The word you're going to be looking for at the end of this post is "Skeksis"

Lisa writes: Baby birds on Sunday. They're getting pin feathers all over. (Click the pic for extreme pin feather close up.)

You'd think this would make them cuter. I'm sure their mother loves them, but cute is in the eye of beholder.

How cute you think they are depends a little on how you feel about this:

Happy birdday to you

Lisa writes: They grow up so fast! The previous baby bird picture was from Monday morning. This one is from Wednesday morning. (Click to enlarge)


Worms must be extremely nutritious. See how much bigger they've gotten? And this one is from Thursday morning. See how the little feathers on their wings have grown in one day!

Deb's wedding: Series 2 of probably many

Lisa writes: More pictures. These are from my cousin Debbie (not to be confused with my Aunt Debbie or the Debbie getting married).


The reception venue. Yes, that's a gorilla on the roof. Why do you ask?










Me and my dad.











The neighbor's little dog that came over to check out the party.






Kellen's aunt made the cake and his mother made the dress.









Did I mention there were mariachis?

More wedding pics

Lisa writes: Tom and my niece and nephew, Chelsea and Timothy. Could anything be cuter than this?

Baby birds

Lisa writes: The robin's eggs on our front porch hatched over the weekend! There were four eggs and I've spied at least two babies. Click pics to enlarge.


The one on the left is sleeping on its belly with its tail up in the air, a lot like my nephew. The one in the middle, I can't figure out which end is up.



The momma robin is a very good momma, but I think she's about had it with me spying on her.





We're busting out in baby birds all over the place. This is the next door neighbor's carport. They took down these closet doors with the intent of refinishing them, but before they could get around to it, a blue jay built a next on top. Check out the impressive size of that thing! The robin's nest is grass and mud and Christmas tree tinsel. The blue jay used small branches.

Deb's wedding: Series 1 of probably many

Lisa writes: My sister Debbie married Kellen on Saturday. We had the whole gang out for the wedding, which was fantastic. There were several new babies to meet and 2nd cousins to get reacquainted with.

Pictures below are from the camera of my 12 year old niece, Madison. Click any picture to enlarge.


Portrait of the artist.






My parents spent weeks practicing their tango for the reception.






New niece Evelyn crawled up on Breanna's lap and fell asleep.









The happy couple immediately after the ceremony. Kellen is wearing a traditional shirt and tie from Mexico.




His parents and her parents.




Evelyn and mom, my sister Lori.







Christi's family picture, with some Donny and Dad interference.









Siblings and the new sibling-in-law.




Christi and Evelyn at the reception.




Christian and Kellen at the reception. Kellen is wearing a full mariachi outfit from the area where his dad grew up. (Note the interesting mirrored effect from the crazy camera.)


Christian greeting guests on the way in, wearing Kellen's hat.




But it's never really a party until the mariachis arrive. (Kellen's dad singing.)

Christi's family is faster than yours

Christi writes: "St. George Triathlon last weekend. Tim, Bre and Tay all took 1st in their divisions. Madi and Christi took 5th in their divisions and Christian came in 15th. There were over 400 people! It was a lot of fun :) Anyone want to run it with us next time?"

Happy Earth Day

Lisa writes: Yesterday was Earth Day and tomorrow is Arbor Day. This means if you are an American elementary school student you are up to your ears in global warming and drowning polar bears right about now.

I used to watch Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom on Sundays and think that animals were beautiful and amazing. Now, I watch Animal Planet and every episode ends with, "but these beautiful animals are in trouble and if we don't save them soon, they may disappear." Every single episode leaves me curled in a fetal position, rocking back and forth. The animals are all going to die, and it's all my fault. The world would be a better place if people weren't here. That's what I've learned from Animal Planet lately.

Yesterday, I saw one author sum it up well: "I wonder if the pendulum has swung and climate change threatens to become for kids today what nuclear proliferation was for kids of my generation in the 1970s and '80s: a source of existential despair." Remember that? Remember 99 Red Balloons and The Final Countdown and Russians? War Games? We can be ironic about it now, because we know that the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. didn't cause each other's mutual annihilation. Hurray! But all through my school days that question was still very much up in the air and we kids worried about it. A lot. And it seemed like the schools and media wanted us to worry about it. We were fed a steady stream of worry.

Which brings me back to the polar bears. Kids, turn off the lights when you leave a room, recycle your paper and glass, don't buy a Hummer, and stop beating yourself up about this. Don't let anybody convince you that the world would be a better place if you weren't in it. Because -- you know what? -- it wouldn't. The world is good because of you.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars;

you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you,

no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

-- Desiderata

Robin eggs

Lisa writes: Look! Look! Look what we have in the planter on our front porch!


Aren't they beautiful? Here's hoping mama robin has nerves of steel to withstand the trauma of our daily comings and goings.

Every time a bell rings, a chicken gets its wings

4/15/09 Lisa writes to Christi: "How are the chickens? Still got 6 out of 6?"

Christi replies: "So far..."

4/16/09 Christi writes: "I spoke too soon...Breanna's little chick got her wings today. I came home from work and Bre, Tay and Christian were all crying and making a coffin for "Speck PeeWee Parsons." Yep, she was the runt (that's why Bre chose her...she could relate). Madison, however, has hardened in her old age. She thinks they're all crazy, "It's just a chicken...we eat them all the time. That's the benefit of being at the top of the food chain, people!" Christian told her to "go away!" so he could mourn. Taylor wants to be a vegetarian now. Breanna is asking for another chick...I told her "Speck" would feel betrayed...it's better to just remember the good times."

Robin's nest

Lisa writes: We have a hard-working bird building a nest in the hanging planter on our front porch. It's a male robin. We haven't seen a female. Do they build the nest first and then go get a mate?

Here's the "before" picture, when he was checking out the location three days ago.

Here's what it looked like this morning. If you click to enlarge, you can see how he cleverly made use of the left-over Christmas tree tinsel he found stuck in our lawn. Bird bling.

Ready for occupants! It's been so interesting watching him work on this. He brings some sticks and mud, puts them where he wants them, and then presses his belly into the nest as he turns in circles to form the shape of the bowl.

The true meaning of Easter

Lisa writes: Tom and I teach the 5 year old Sunday School class. Three weeks ago, we started prepping the kids for Easter. I asked, "What is the next holiday coming up?"

All of the kids hollered, "Easter!"

"Right!" I said, "And why do we celebrate Easter?"

"Candy!" "Chocolate!" "The Easter Bunny!" they said.

"Ok, but you know how Christmas isn't really about Santa Claus ..." I started.

"It's about baby Jesus," one of them said.

"Right! Exactly! So, Easter isn't really about the Easter Bunny. What is Easter really about?"

No answers. None of them had a clue. Now, you can't really blame them. These guys are five. That means last Easter was the first time they even had the faintest idea what was going on, and it was a whole year ago. But I think they've got it now.

Fast forward to yesterday. We asked the question again, "Why do we celebrate Easter?" and one little guy solemnly answered, "Easter isn't all fun and games."

Christi & Co.'s Easter chicks

Lisa writes: Christi and company got chicks for Easter. The original idea was to get four hens and set them up in a pen in the backyard where the kids could learn some responsibility from tending them and gathering fresh eggs. Then Tim decided he wanted one, too. Then he talked Christi into getting one as "back-up." (Baby chicks have a pretty high mortality rate, see.) So now they are a six-chicken family.

Each kid got to pick their own bird. Christian, the 7 year old, was lobbying hard for a rooster. His logic was, "I don't want a GIRL chicken. There are enough GIRLS in this family already." There is no way the neighbors would appreciate 5 a.m. crowing, and roosters can be mean. Plus, Christian can't tell the difference between a girl chick and a boy chick, so I think they just let him pick out a chick that was a different color from the rest. As far as he knows, that makes it a boy.


Yesterday, they introduced the chicks to the dogs. Scout is the blonde one, Kodi is the brown one.

Christi writes: So...the chicks survived their first encounter with the dogs. Note Scout's look of terror and Kodi licking his lips. When Tim opened the door he kept saying, "Nice...be nice..." which is what we always say when we're about to feed the dogs something out of our hand. So, Kodi starts licking the chick and drooling ... just tasting. When I pointed out that Tim was using the "snack time" command, he quickly changed to "No." So, now they're both just scared of the the little buggers. Which may be the chicks' only chance for survival.

Songs to subject you to: Easter edition

Lisa writes: We went over to Tom's mom's house for an Easter brunch this morning, and while we waited for the rest of the gang to arrive, we turned on the hifi and put on the nearest record -- Burt Bacharach's greatest hits. Am I the only person who didn't realize that this (1983) was a cover of this song (1965) below?

I'm big in Poland

Lisa writes: Remember the clothes swap I did in February? (If not, here's what I wrote about it then.) My friend Julie invited her Polish journalist friend. And now we're all famous in Poland!

Completely undecipherable Polish magazine article is here.

Only slightly more intelligible Google Translator-ified article here. I like that she said I was well-organized. At least, I think that's what she said.

Tom's favorite kid books

Lisa writes: Tom says he was all about the Richard Scarry books for a while. I read a quote from Scarry once where he said he wrote books that were meant to be dog-eared and held together with tape. That's the sign of a good kid's book.

We liked Richard Scarry books at our house, too. I very vividly remember this one to the right. That chair is DOOMED.

Tom says he liked Roald Dahl's "James and the Giant Peach" for a while. I remember in third grade, the teacher had the smartest boy in the class read a chapter from this book out loud to us every day after lunch as a reward for being good. I thought that boy was awesome for getting such a spectacular priviledge, but I also secretly thought I could have read it out loud better than he did.

As little kids, and even older, Tom says they read a lot of Beatrix Potter. It's interesting to watch the evolution of children's books. Those sweet old bunny books are quite scary and occasionally gruesome.

Right, Tom Kitten?

Lisa's favorite kid books

Lisa writes: I'm the oldest of five kids. Lori is close to my age, but Christi is 6 years younger, Donny is 10 years younger than I am and Debbie is just shy of 16 years younger. I read books to them, and their favorite books, I read over and over.

Christi's favorite book growing up was "Dooly and the Snortsnoot" by Jack Kent. Classic 1972 watercolor. It is long out of print, but is worth picking up if you ever see it in a used book store or online. It teaches a good lesson about self-worth and hidden potential and the importance of eating your vegetables, and it has the snarliest snortsnoot in literary history.

Donny's favorite book was Dr. Suess' "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish." I can still recite it, and I still want one of those pets with the blue hair to brush and comb.



Debbie's favorite book was whatever the bigger kids were reading, but, barring that, she was partial to a padded plastic bathtub book called "My Little Pony's Undersea Adventure." I think it had six pages.

Myself, I was a Chronicles of Narnia kid. Every book, over and over, except "The Last Battle" which I could only occasionally psyche myself up to read.

What about you and your kids?

Cousin Kim runs the National Marathon

Lisa writes: Yesterday, my cousin Kim came down to D.C. to join 6000 other crazy people to run the National Marathon. I went down to lend emotional support.

Here's how I roll these days.

Here is how Kim and her family roll. (They call this the Baby Train.)

We could only guess where Kim was on the 13 mile loop, so we found a spot near the Capitol and waited. There were lots of interesting people to see. This is only a small sampling.

Click on the lady with the boxer dogs to see their ear-splints better.

Runners, running.

There was this guy with the yellow checkered running tights.

And this fantastic lady with the leopard-print coordinates with hot pink trim and matching hot pink shoes.

I didn't got a shot of the guy in the kilt, or the guy with the mohawk, or the guy who ran the whole marathon in an aloha shirt. Or the guy who

JUGGLED the whole way.

It was 32 degrees when the racers were gathering at 7 a.m., but it warmed up a lot as the morning wore on. All along the route were discarded gloves, long-sleeved t-shirts, and track jackets.

And here comes Kim! She's in the pink on the left.

A high-five, and she's off again.

Running by the Capitol building.

There was a whole team of people with this shirt. Luckily, the guy finished. Custom print jobs don't come cheap.

Kim and her friend / training partner at the finish line.

Caden was very proud of her medal.

Pictures of Baby Evelyn on Lori's blog

Lisa writes: Baby alert! Go here to see pictures and read updates about Lori's new baby, Evelyn.

Up, up and away!

Lisa writes: Airline travel can be fun! Click here.

12 hours ago, update from Lisa's mom

Lisa's mom writes: Just called Deb at the Weller's. I won't be able to talk to her for 2 + weeks - I have got to figure out their blog. Aunt Deb had not seen Ava (7 1/2) and Cameron (10 1/2) for almost three years - Lisa's wedding - in 2006. This is the first time she has ever seen Benjamin. He is totally two. First thing he did was threw everything out of her suitcase. He made her laugh. "He just runs around getting in trouble."

Right now she is downloading music for Ava on her Ipod for the 14 hour plane trip tomorrow. She said, "Cameron just lost his Ipod today! He will have to talk to me! Lori is making everyone tacos. Dave is still at work and he hasn't packed."

They are on their way to the airport tomorrow morning to Beijing, China.

My sister's adoption update

Lisa writes: You remember the joyous, blessed news from my sister, Lori? They've been waiting for the go-ahead call from the adoption agency letting them know when they can go pick up baby Evelyn. They got the call yesterday and they fly out March 20th. They'll be in China for two weeks, and they're taking all three of their kids and my other sister, Debbie, to act as nanny.

Suggestions? Anyone?

Lisa writes: Here's a house problem. The previous owners painted the floor of the carport blue, then light green, then dark green. Possibly several coats. And now it's peeling off. The end result is sort of a moldy-looking concrete leprosy. Last summer, I borrowed a neighbor's electric power washer and spent two hours accomplishing the following:

A heart-warming testament of my affections, to be sure, but not much as far as improving the asthetics of the carport.We now have an offer to borrow a much more powerful gas power washer. But my question is, even if we can get the paint off, what should we DO with this? Repaint it? Seal it with something else? Carpet? Brick? Slate? Burn down the house and start over again?

No snow

Lisa writes: Wow, what a difference a week makes. This time last week we were shoveling out from 6 inches of snow. Today, it's 70 degrees.

Scroll down to March 2 entries to see the snow pictures. And then compare them to today's counterparts.

Unsolicited advice: Incoming paper

Lisa writes: Tom and I are fairly tidy. We stay on top of the dishes and the laundry. We zamboni the living room right before you come over. But paper is our downfall. We get so much paper. And so much of it looks important. And you never know when you're going to get audited, right? So you'd better keep all of it, just in case! And naturally the best way to keep it is to stack it in piles.

Behold: The paper piles. (Note: This is only a small sample of what we're capable of.)

I hate the piles. They look bad, and it's impossible to find anything. So I put my little brain to it and came up with this "system" that we've been using pretty successfully for the past two years.

The "system" is simply this: Every piece of paper that comes into the house is going to go one of four places, and all of the places are right next to each other, and the whole shebang is located right by the door -- the door that we enter when we bring in the mail. Basically, no paper gets more than three steps into the house without being dealt with.

(1) Trash (recycling). Junk mail, envelopes, catalogs, and newspaper go into whatever box is handy and the whole thing goes out with the recycling every Wednesday. This category gets more stuff than everything else put together.

(2) Shred (recycling). Tom's mom gave us this handy dandy shredder for Christmas two years ago and we get a lot of mileage out of it. Credit card offers and things with names, addresses, birthdates, etc. go through the shredder and then get put into a paper bag or another box and go out with the recycling.

(3) Things to be filed. Retirement statements, insurance statements, tax forms all go into the back slot of this little mail thingy.

(4) Things to be acted upon. Bills, receipts that need to be entered into Quicken, next month's tithing slips, letters to reply to all go into the front slot of the mail thingy. Once they've been paid, entered, offered, or replied to, they move to the back slot. When the back slot is full (every two weeks or so) I take all the stuff in it and file it in the milk crate with the hanging file folders that I've been using since 1997.

Bears

Lisa's mom writes: Christian (age 7) is out with his dad "snow caving" with the Young Men's group from church! He was worried about the bears. Christi told him the bears have their own caves.

Christian said, "But what if they think our snow cave is better than their cave?"

Christi's assuring reply, "Well, then you are bear meat."

Where in the world are Lisa's parents?

Lisa writes: Over Valentine's Day weekend, my parents went on a cruise around the Yucatan. This is what they do.

Getting ready to get on the big boat in New Orleans. Dad texted me, "Just wanted to let you know we're here in New Orleans for Mardi Gras and you're not. Ha ha."


Haven't you always wanted a monkey?


Mayan ruins.


Sacrificial altar. Here, Dad is defying the gods.