Grasshopper New Media Presents...

I was randomly watching a morning news program several months ago and saw an interview with Stephen Covey that fascinated me.  He was talking about building relationships with children, and the specific point he made was to never break a promise.
“No sweat,” I thought to myself.  I don’t have a problem in this area.
Then Covey […]

When you are the parent of twins you experience some benefits of having two the same age as well as some drawbacks. I won’t get into how traumatic my girls early arrival was and how having two infants was more stress than I could have ever imagined, so maybe another time. What I’ve noticed, though, […]

My dad traveled a lot when I was a child. He brought things home with him. For my mom, it was china cups. For my sister, spoons. For me, most often, vehicles.
He brought me cars and trucks, little ones, Matchbox. Because he traveled in western Canada, they often were the original English ones.
Once he brought […]

I went to the family reunion somewhat grudgingly.
A distant cousin had been doing research and discovered a pool of people that shared her great-great-grandfather. She planned a trip from Colorado to Michigan to Pennsylvania to Connecticut. She wondered if the Michigan people could meet.
So a bunch of people with Kies somewhere in their family tree […]

I moved to a new job in January. Because I work in a church, it meant that our family moved to a new church. Because the job isn’t far away, we didn’t have to move to a new house, nor did our daughter have to change schools. As a high school junior, that is a […]

One thousand miles.
Okay. To be more precise, one thousand three hundred and fifty-eight miles. That’s how many miles were between Hope and I. We were in Massachusetts. She was in Orlando. She was on a choir trip, singing at Disney World.
To be more accurate, she was on a trip to Disney World with her high […]

Every time someone asks me how Max is doing, I say the same thing: “Fine; talking like crazy.” Which is true - that kid of mine, he’s a talker. Then again, I’m a talker, so maybe it’s one of those things where the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree.
The thing is, I am amazed, […]

Recently, Ben spent his first night away from home. No, that’s not right. He spent his first half-night away from home. Around 11:30pm, my husband and I were watching the tail end of a movie when the phone rang. We looked at each other meaningfully before getting up to answer it. […]

This week I kicked off a new writing project on my personal blog. It’s another new effort to stay committed to a promise I made myself a few months ago. Inspired by x365.org, I will write 36 words about 365 people over 365 days. 36 because that’s my age. The process of developing a […]

I’ve never smoked a cigarette or gotten a tattoo. I don’t even have my ears pierced. My closet sports no designer clothing or shoes. I’ve never even lived close enough to a major city to be in the know about the hottest nightspots or newest underground bands. My pregnancy, like most other things in my […]