When I was little, we didn't believe in Santa Claus. My parents were pretty candid with us from the beginning that they bought us the presents, they filled the stockings, and they were the ones watching us for good behavior. I was also raised in a very religious household (born on the mission field, in fact). Jesus was always the reason for the season, not a jolly bearded man.One year, a friend of theirs came to visit and brought a book with him. I wish I could find it-- I can't track it down anywhere online now. It was the true... More »

I was reading Shawn's post earlier, and it made me think about the best present I've ever gotten from a man. I immediately zeroed in on one memory. It was winter 1998, and the gift was so wonderful that to this day I remember opening the wrapping paper and seeing the box inside.I was a sophomore (if I'm doing the math right), and he was a freshman. His name was Andy. He rode my bus. Andy was younger than me and an understated sort of cute; with floppy brown hair, glasses, a nervous bounce to his knee. I don't remember how he... More »

Eight hours in the car in DC traffic. Seven hours scouring deals on Black Friday. Six pounds gained. Five helpings of apple pie. Four best friends visited. Three full discs of saved photos. Two full meals with two sets of grandparents. One incredible Thanksgiving.I am grateful every day of my life for the people that are in it. So happy to have spent the holiday with my extended family, and so content to be home now with my immediate one.... More »

It's 10:42 at night, and I just got back from a tooth fairy outing. Jason finally relieved Eli of the front incisor that's been bothering him for weeks. I guess it was so quick and painless that Elias didn't even realize it'd been pulled out. Good riddance. Seriously, that TOOTH. It was the bane of our kid's existence. He couldn't really eat with it, and it looked crazy. I mean, it was so barely-hanging-on that it stuck out at a 90-degree angle.Elias was so stoked about the tooth being gone that he made me put it online (literally; the first... More »

Everyone has some Room of Shame in their house, right? Like; the one place that's virtually never clean or guest-safe, where all random oddities go to die or be forgotten. It's that place you shove everything. It's some quarantined off, doored area, preferably dark and out of the way. In our apartment, it used to be the master bath. I don't even know how that happened, honestly-- I assume it's all some long story that involves Jason bringing in a shovel or something and putting it in the master bathtub. And then the ladder went in there. And then summer toys... More »

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This morning I woke up to the kids giggling. Usually, that level of delight involves an equal level of mess; like when I woke up and they were making their own watercolors, or trying to duplicate a wind tunnel with a fan (oh, I'm serious). So I peeked around my door-- almost not wanting to know-- and this is what I found:This picture is actually really cute and not nearly as inappropriate as the censor bar would lead you to believe: he's putting ponytails into her hair. And they were falling out. And he was trying again, all flustered, and... More »

Two months, one surgery, and a few metal pins later, my son was able to take his first bath tonight sans-cast. He very gently lowered his bare arm into the water, testing; afraid his bones would break again in contact with something other than air. His face lit up at the warmth, and he grinned, then laughed. Then sighed: "... It feels so wonderful."He's still got three weeks left in the splint, but this kid has been such a trooper-- so gracious, so brave, and so appreciative of all these little victories. He's taken every setback in stride, too; every sad... More »

Of all the questions I field from other parents, the majority of them are about video game recommendations for their kids. Video games are a hard thing. You want it to be action-filled without being violent, and challenging without being frustrating. You want it to be current, but you don't want to invest in just any popular title. And unless you're really into the culture, you can get lost among all the similar-pop-art covers in the game aisle at Best Buy. I get that, totally.With Christmas coming up (I know, in the FAR future, but since the sales are on,... More »

Today we're going to be covering typography as it relates to CSS. For those of you who aren't web geeks, CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheet, and it's a language responsible for how web pages are displayed. When you load a page, an external CSS file is pulled, and that file tells the site which background color to use, where columns should go, the border width on images, whether links are underlined, everything. A long time ago-- not that long, I guess, but around the time I was still packing school lunches and riding a bus-- all that information was... More »