Grasshopper New Media Presents...

Sally Rudy died Easter weekend. Her funeral was March 29. Nancy and I went. I put on a suit.
The last time I talked with Sally was a few months ago. Nancy last saw her three years ago. We never talked much. But we recognized everything that was said in the tributes. Direct, blunt, open, loving, […]

My wife said something today that I found disturbing: She called one of her parenting choices “stupid.”
Specifically, she was telling me a story from the early days of our kids’ lives, about how they would fight. In one instance, out of desperation, she decided that a coin-toss should determine who would get to choose a […]

Spring Break wasn’t quite long enough for us this year, but we are back to school. I could have happily taken another week (or two) off, but I figure we’ll enjoy our time off even more when its warm out, so we are back to work. If we keep it up we should be done […]

Happiness is…..

 a bear hug from your child

 sleeping in late on a Saturday morning

 watching a family movie together

 seeing your kids play happily together

 hearing: “I love you Mom” (or Dad)

 playing games as a family

 watching your kids play sports

 bedtime

 a refrigerator covered with art projects

*and more…. what would you add to the list?

by AmyL

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Here are twenty-six utterances I’ve banned from the dining room table. If either one of my children should happen to speak, or even mutter, any of these words or sentences, he will end up in his room without having taken another bite of his meal. None of these words accords respect to the […]

“Help us to be better people everyday.” These words close our family Grace each time we say it. This is the daily goal for my husband and myself, and what we want most to instill in our children. Lots of days we fail miserably, but still it helps to bring our common […]

If you’ve been following my writing/life, either here or at A Mom, a Blog and the Life In-Between (what? you haven’t?? why???), then you could probably see this post coming from a mile away.
Now that Max is 2 and a 1/2, we’ve reached that place: the one where we’re trying to figure out how to […]

Life can seem pretty overwhelming. Heck, I got freaked out last week reading The Intellectual Devotional and finding out the sun will explode in another 4.5 billion years, sending me into an extensional tailspin for about a day, pondering what was the true meaning of life….
And then, as I snapped out of it, I […]

Andrew started playing soccer sometime around first grade. Middlebury, Indiana had a huge (to us) recreational soccer program. We signed him up and started an obsession which has lasted 15 years.
Andrew has played recreational, select, travel, middle school, high school, college, indoor and outdoor soccer. We have payed for shoes, gloves, jerseys, pads, registration fees, […]

My son is now officially sixteen. Grey hairs are popping up as I type each word of this essay.
He is unlike most teenagers. First off, he is *rarely* moody, and when he does get snippy with me, he apologizes on his own with no prompting from his folks. He’s a good kid.
He’s also smart and […]