Interviews with Boys: 2022

Seamus at 13 years old What is the meaning of life? What do you want to be when you grow up? What makes you happy? What are you afraid of? If you had one wish, what would you wish for? What is the funniest word? What is the hardest thing to do? What is the…

Basketball Season

On Friday after Thanksgiving, we went to the lake to visit with grandparents and have Thanksgiving. The older boys watched some world cup (including the US/England game) and the younger kids were in the hot tub for awhile. It was a beautiful day! When we got home, Saturday was a big day of basketball revelations.…

Homecoming

This weekend was homecoming at my university, and I took Harlan and his buddy to be helpers. All the other kids had games, but then Gilbert’s got residual-rained out. Porter woke up Sunday with a bad sore throat, so he laid on the couch all day Sunday. Seamus, Gilbert, and Harlan went to the batting…

Fun Weekend

It was a little blustery, but after the deluge of last weekend, it was nice to be out and about this weekend. I spent a lot of time with my older boys, which is a little unusual because when we split up the family for activities, I’m more likely to take the younger kids. However,…

The Grind

I was going to write a happy and upbeat post about the kids going back to school, but it turns out they weren’t actually that excited about it. Everyone is fine, but transition from summer has made a lot of them kind of grumpy and needing more sleep. However, Gilbert finally switched from Spanish into…

Pittsburgh–Again

I’m in Pittsburgh for the NEH summer faculty institute on Afro-Latinx and Afro-Latin American Transnational Dialogues. It’s fascinating, career changing, and I’m learning so much! Over the weekend, Patrick brought the kids up for a fun weekend so we could not have to go two weeks without seeing each other. I could have driven back…

Skiing Copper Mountain

For the last few days, we’ve been at Copper Mountain during the day, and hanging out with our cousins at night. We have had a lot of snow. From Thursday until Saturday morning, it snowed and snowed. I think all told, we had about 12-14 inches of snow. We had a little trouble getting out…

Interviews with the Boys in 2021

Seamus at 12 years old favorite color: blue favorite food: breakfast favorite dessert: pie with ice cream favorite thing to do: sports with friends favorite movie: Lord of the Rings favorite video game: Rocket League favorite subject in school: Civics favorite sport: basketball and skiing favorite book: Charlie Thorne and the Last Equation What is…

Gilbert’s Solo Trip

For Seamus’s 10th birthday, Patrick and I took him to NYC by himself, leaving the other kids at home with grandparents. We were sad that we couldn’t do the same for Gilbert, as we’d hoped it would be a tradition we could do for each of the kids. But we managed it before his 11th…

Camp Drop Off

This weekend was so busy! We had a BBQ with friends on Friday night, then the boys had their baseball playoff game on Saturday morning. One of their teammates hit a grand slam while Gilbert was on third to cinch the championship game this coming weekend. Seamus and Gilbert both had a couple of hits…