Ella spread a layer of butter onto a slice of warm, freshly made bread. Our host in Portugal had baked a loaf for us earlier in the morning, and breakfast was waiting for us when we came down the creaky stairs of the inn. The bread...
The woman seated at the table next to me asks for a to-go box. She is having the complimentary breakfast at the hotel’s restaurant with her two small children, who are scribbling wildly on the paper menus with red and blue crayons. The waitress apologizes, explaining...
When I am traveling for work, I find myself taking screenshots and pictures of things I think the girls would like. I might stumble across a video of a baby giraffe first standing up on wobbly legs, find a cookie recipe we might want to...
When German composer and pianist Ludwig van Beethoven was asked about his method of writing by a fellow composer in 1822, he shared, “I carry my thoughts about me for a long time, sometimes a very long time, before I set them down …” Even when Beethoven...
When our realtor walked us through the house we have now lived in for nearly ten years, he saw me hesitating as I stared at the dated flooring and the peeling cabinets. I still remember his encouraging words: “It could be really beautiful. Can you see...
When the girls were much younger, we often spent afternoons at the park. During the fall, the trees would begin losing their leaves. If there was a bit of wind, hundreds of leaves would swirl down all at once, making it look like it was...
Growing up, my parents had a table in their house known as the art table. It stood adjacent to the kitchen table and was covered with years of crayon markings and dried glue and paint smudges. You see, my mother is an artist (though she probably...
At first glance, the few bees buzzing around home plate appeared to be no big deal. Our family, seated along the third base line at the Diamondbacks’ home game, watched as the people on the field did little dances of avoidance around the bees, swaying from...
As Emma and I walked out of the grocery store, she paused and pointed toward her blue and pink mismatched socks. “That girl standing by the flowers looked at my socks,” she said. Curiously, I asked, “And then what happened?” Emma shrugged casually, “That was it.” We loaded our...
From the backseat, Ella exclaimed, “There’s a goose in this parking lot!” Sure enough, a lone goose sat in the middle of a parking space, a few spots away from our car. Questions flooded our minds. Was it hurt? Unable to fly? Something had to be wrong, Ella and...