Sometimes I wonder if people read this blog and think that my kids are the inspiration for all the creative stuff that we do. It’s a nice thought, but really, it’s not true. I get an idea, and I want to do it, and usually it’s fun and engaging enough that my kids want to participate. Honestly though, I was this way before kids.
It goes like this.
I … [Read More]
{Esmé, 2009}
Not that long ago I wrote about how our kids are rarely apart, and now here I am writing about how I left Esmé behind and took Hawk with me to Toronto last week. When Esmé was small, I took her along with me to Edmonton, and Victoria, and other authorly destinations. Last year I left her home with Jack while I took a then 7-month-old Hawk with … [Read More]
My Auntie Ruth … wow. She has the best ideas!
The last time she was here, she brought out a couple of paper lunch bags that had been folded in half and stapled together with a long stapler. So what, right? So EVERYTHING!
Once she explained what it was for, I got really excited. She uses them with her grade 3 students to make ‘Me’ books, with pages about their … [Read More]
Did you know that you can order ladybugs online, and they’ll be delivered to your address for you to release into your garden?
And why would you want to do that?
Just ask Esmé. She can tell you. As she digs deeper into her bug learning, she is getting more and more excited about the interesting things that bugs do. Like eat aphids and thripes and mites that will … [Read More]
I don’t remember glow sticks from my own childhood. Did we have them? Were they a thing? I don’t think so. Coveted prizes in the cereal box, yes … glow sticks, not so much.
My first memory of them is from the raves I went to, almost twenty years ago now. I remember pulsing music, heavy on the drum and base, heavy on the trance, and beyond that I don’t … [Read More]
The other day we went to Maplewood Farm for the morning, bringing along fresh veggies for the bunnies and seeds for the birds.
It’s hard to say who gets more out of a trip to the farm. Esmé loves planning and packing and doling out treats for the rabbits, and she especially adores the guinea pigs who room in with said bunnies. Hawk loves the ducks and the chickens, and … [Read More]
One of my favourite books as a child was E. B. White’s Trumpet of the Swan. When we landed in Whitehorse last week, the first thing I spotted was a large cut-out of a white swan at the side of the Alaska Highway that said “Swan Haven Open!”
That’s right, trumpeter swans!
They’re gathering in the Whitehorse area, waiting for their various nesting grounds to thaw.
The Yukon Young Author’s Conference is an awesome two-day opportunity for teenaged writers to group together with author mentors. They’ve had heaps of talented authors come up over the years (Susan Juby! Ivan Coyote! W.O. Mitchell! Wayne Johnson!) and here I’ve been, politely declining for the last couple of years while my children were wee.
This year when the lovely Sara Davidson (organizer, educator, pink-sparkly-goddess extraordinaire) emailed at the usual … [Read More]
Sometimes I wonder if people read this blog and think … [Read More]
{Esmé, 2009}
Not that long ago I wrote about how our … [Read More]
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