growing up memories

The summer I graduated from high school our family packed up and went to live in Japan for a month. People wonder how in the world my parents maneuvered a family of eleven all over the place, and I’ll be honest, sometimes so do I.  I mean, man alive, in…

Dave’s Dad (in the middle above) grew up in Sun Valley, Idaho.  His parents didn’t ski, but the elementary school provided a way for kids to get to the slopes and he took them up on it.  Later he was on the ski team in high school and has really…

I keep trying to figure out what to call this Friday series of growing-up-reminiscing.  Since my brother Josh came up with the name “71 Toes,” I’m now counting on him to come up with a great name for this series.  Dave mentioned “110 Toes” and I want to come up…

This is the second in a series of posts I am doing about my growing up years.  (They are supposed to be on Fridays in place of my Q&A stuff but I’m a little slow this week.)  The first post is back here and it has more pictures (I just…

This is the first post in a Friday-series I am doing about my growing-up years.  Because I tell you, my family did some pretty crazy things during those years (a summary of a few of them is back here) and I want to have a record and pictures together for…

We slip quietly into our seats overlooking the instruments below. The melodic hum of their tuning ritual fills up the cavernous beauty in front of me: forest green (my favorite color back then) mixed with gold leaf and warm wood. We have just ascended three staircases to get to our…

(I’ll get back to my Thursday recipes and Friday Q & A’s next week.) Growing up my Dad was big into goals.  And when I say big, I mean REALLY big.  He talked about them all the time (still does).  He had all kinds of lists and charts about them. …

When I was a freshman in high school my family moved to England for six months. I know I’ve talked about it before…how I almost withered away and died but how incredibly grateful I am, looking back, for that little blip in time where I grew more than I ever…

Sometimes I like to try to reinvent the wheel.  I mean, there is so much new technology there’s got to be a better way to do a lot of things, right?  And then when it comes to parenting, there are new whiz-bang ideas everywhere you look.  My parents had a…

Growing up we had a tradition of going to Lake Powell. We didn’t go in the summer like most normal people do.  Because we weren’t really all that normal. We packed up and went for Easter. I don’t know how many years we did that, but man alive, it sure…