House O' Sullivans

Last month, Hallee turned 8. She wanted to host a friend birthday party the Friday before her actual birthday. The way it works around here is my kids plan their own parties. Entirely. They aren't Pinterest-perfect, but they are kid-perfect. Hallee's plan was to have all of her friends come wearing their pajamas, have a hearty corn-dog, fruit salad, and lemonade dinner, surprise her friends with gifts (she gave them each a stuffed animal), watch an episode of Planet Earth (yes, we are raising nerds around here), and finish off with some cheesecake and strawberries and backyard games. Hallee is such a vibrant girl and an amazingly fun party host. She was in heaven all night. Here's that hearty corn-dog dinner. Opening birthday gifts. Cheesecake time. None of us are really cake eaters around here. Hallee took great pleasure in squirting piles of whipped cream on everyone's cheesecake. Sometimes you just need to supplement with a few more calor...

Pi Day has always been epic for me. When I was teaching at Wasatch Junior high, my classes celebrated heartily. The day's festivities always included Pi artwork, a Pi memorizing contest (there were kids every year who memorized more than 50 digits, sometimes more than 100), Pi explorations, Pi music, Pi poetry, Pi movies, and pie (usually donated by Harmon's, good solid people that they are).  One of my favorite memories of teaching math at Wasatch involves a Pi Day:  I had a certain zealous Geometry class one year. They loved math. They asked for extra proofs. They wanted to derive the formulas that we learned. They thirsted for mathematical knowledge. They were over-zealous . And they were fun . Every Friday, I'd allow them to stand on their desks, and to the beat of my fist pumps, we'd shout out, "WE . . . LOVE . . . MATH!!!!," as loud as we could. Everyone in our wing of the building heard it. That's why I'd only let them do it once a wee...

We are always attempting to surprise each other around here. It's become a sort of family game. So yesterday I formulated my plan to get up early, decorate the house with an obscene number of hearts, and make brownie waffles for breakfast to kick off the Valentine's Day festivities. Right before I went to bed last night, I realized that we didn't have any eggs in the house because we'd used what the backyard hens had laid that day at breakfast. Not wanting to give away my surprise with a late night grocery run, I prayed that the chickens would lay the three eggs I needed for my recipe before the crack of dawn. (We have 9 am church you know.) This morning while I was executing phase 1 of my plan (taping up obscene numbers of hearts around the house), Zeke sleepily wandered out of his bedroom, so I sent him out to the chicken coop to see if the hens had laid anything. Behold!! He returned promptly with exactly 3 eggs! God is good.  Part of my early morning decor...