For our first family ski trip to Vermont a few years ago, we drove our 2006 Honda Odyssey. We were headed to the Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe, a six-plus hour drive north of home outside of New York City. My Odyssey is a good car—a minivan with lots of room for the girls to spread out and be comfortable on longer road trips, a fact that’s helped us out on more than one drive down to Florida. It’s also {Read More}
Passports with Purpose 2015 – Worldreader Brings Books to Kenya
November 8, 2015 by Leave a Comment
I cannot imagine what my life as a child would have been like without the magic of books. From the time I learned to read, I spent countless hours with my nose buried in the pages of my favorites–the Anastasia series by Lois Lowry, All of a Kind Family, Where the Red Fern Grows, and anything at all by Judy Blume are the ones that come to mind first. My daughters are the same, especially the oldest, and as a {Read More}
Tips for Sharing Photography with Your Kids
October 5, 2015 by Leave a Comment
My middle daughter is a budding photographer and she’s got a great eye. In fact, all of the images in this post are hers with the exception of the two I took of her with the camera. Her favorite types of shots are close up abstractions of items found in nature–flowers, leaves, insects–but she also likes to play with unique angles and lighting. Textures. Colors. I’m not sure when her enthusiasm for the camera began, but I’m pretty sure {Read More}
5 Ways to Connect Your Kids with Nature
October 2, 2015 by Leave a Comment
The woods behind the house where I grew up went on forever and I knew every inch of them. A thick layer of amber-colored pine needles littered the woodland floor and I can easily conjure the warm, damp, composty smell of the spongy blackness I’d unearth by digging beneath the carpet. Through the trees, across the dirt road, was a swamp where we spent hours attempting to sail across in the old baby bathtub or upon makeshift plywood rafts. We’d {Read More}
Farmers Market Friday – Down to Earth in Rye, New York
June 26, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Small and Sweet If you’re looking for an unpretentious market with abundant offerings from local growers and producers, the Rye Farmers Market is a great one to add to your list. Small but sweet, Rye is home to one of Westchester’s pocket-sized markets and is one of my favorites among the many that take place each week around the county. I find that I head east to Rye more frequently than many of the more elaborate destination-type markets Despite my {Read More}
Farmers Market Friday – Tarrytown & Sleepy Hollow, New York a.k.a. The TaSH
June 19, 2015 by 1 Comment
Welcome to Farmers Market Friday! It’s no secret that I love farmers markets. From the time the first spring ramps and asparagus hit the tables in May until there’s nothing but kale and onions in late November, I get pretty much all of our produce from one of our local markets. Where I live in New York’s Hudson Valley, we are blessed with a huge variety of farmers markets. Some are destinations in themselves featuring live music, story times for {Read More}
5 Tips for Leaving Your Dog When You Travel
June 3, 2015 by 14 Comments
It’s happening. The family is bustling around, the laundry room is in full swing, and the bags are stashed by the door waiting to be loaded into the car. All the telltale signs of a vacation are there and the doggy is no fool. She knows you’re leaving. One of the biggest factors for our family when we decided to get a dog was what to do with our furry friend when we traveled—which we do quite a bit. Initially, {Read More}
Can I Bake a Pie? Or What Benign Neglect Has Taught me About Being a Mom
October 22, 2014 by 4 Comments
I don’t like it when I feel like a bad mother. It’s a crappy feeling. Since I’ve started working so much more, I struggle with this sentiment fairly often. After my oldest daughter was born, I was in a new mother’s support group with a fabulous therapist with whom I continued to work in myriad capacities for several years. I will never forget when she taught me about a concept she’d gleaned from Mothering magazine they called “benign neglect,” the gist of {Read More}
5 Reasons to Join (or Start!) a Family Nature Club
October 21, 2014 by 1 Comment
“What if parents, grandparents, and kids around the country were to band together to create nature clubs for families? What if this new form of social/nature networking were to spread as quickly as book clubs and Neighborhood Watches did in recent decades? We would be well on our way to true cultural change.” Richard Louv, author of “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder.” This past Saturday I had the pleasure of joining the Bronx Zoo {Read More}
