Taking young kids on a BWCA canoe trip

Previous post: Planning and prepping for taking young kids on a BWCA canoe trip On the days leading up to our BWCA trip with the girls, it seemed like an awful lot of work. Our trip was going to be two days (one night), which is the most gear and effort for the least amount of days.  And […]

BWCA ho! Prepping a toddler and preschooler for canoe camping

  Me and Adam in the BWCA, circa 2005. We’re so young! Before we had kids, Adam and I took a trip to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) every year. The BWCA is an amazing place — 1,700 square miles of true wilderness, accessible only by canoe/kayak and your feet. The area is dotted […]

Summer vacation: a break from being a two parent working family

It just one week, it will officially be SUMMER. Adam and the girls will be home all day, every day — no work, no school, no daycare. I will still work of course but a heady vacation joy de vivre will rule our daily life. The fridge will also automatically refill itself. And a host […]

That time I judged myself: Teeth whitening

I’m fairly handy with the tooth-whitening function of Picmonkey and similar photo editing tools, and maybe I should have just left it at that. But I didn’t. I did this instead: paid my dentist a lot of money to whiten my teeth. I didn’t expect it to be fun, really, but neither was I prepared […]

Spring Break in Madison

Last year we took our first vacation as a family of four — to Lutsen, over spring break. We had tons of fun, but it was tons of work, too. Blythe was 10 weeks old and getting up every three-to-four hours, and Bee, who had just turned two, had a hard time falling asleep at […]

Winter backpacking and cabin camping with a baby and toddler

There is a moment every year on our annual backpack-into-a-cabin-in-the-woods trip where I am utterly miserable. Typically the moment involves a wailing baby and an overtired me. But then the moment passes, and the memory fades, and I vow to do it again next year — but for more nights. This year had the moments […]

Put on shoes, step on porch

Put on shoes, step on porch is my brother’s mantra for getting himself going on a training run. That’s all you have to do, he says — put on your shoes, go outside, take a couple steps. No matter how long the run is, it always starts that way. When I had my second heart […]

Top read posts of 2013

December is not only the end of the year, but it is also our blog’s birthday. It has been two years since Breanne and I met for that first Borealis lunch, writing lists, trying to think of the perfect name for our blog, and wondering what our friends and family would think. We’ve written 225 […]