welcome to spiceland.

Michael acquired a Spiceland family heirloom recently, an old wooden wall phone with magneto generator. It’s beautiful! Check it out in its new place of honor:

Soon, it will be fitted with equipment which will allow us to initiate calls from it.

Today was “Crazy Sock Day” for Tru’s school’s Red Ribbon Week celebrations. Heidi decided she wanted to participate, too!

Pictures up from Tru’s kindergarten graduation!

Tru poses for a pre-graduation picture.

Tru is learning how to wash cars today. She is having a blast and earning a quarter, and I’m getting a “free” car wash!

We got 8 inches of snow last night, and Mike made a few videos, including a time-lapse video that shows the snow falling over a period of 5 hours.

We met my family outside Atlanta at Red Top Mountain State Park over New Years Day for our Christmas celebration. Here’s a little video from that.

Here’s Heidi’s fall school picture.

Christmas portraits are up!

Tru has had two loose teeth for about 3 weeks now, and she finally lost the first of them yesterday. The tooth fairy brought her $1.65 last night. Mom thought $1 was fine, but Dad thought the tooth fairy needed to give Tru all the change in her purse. Here’s a video from yesterday.

Tru has been running the 1 mile fun runs with me when Mike and I run in local 5Ks. She has gotten really good at it, and at age 5, she can run a mile in 12 minutes without stopping. Naturally, when her school announced a fun run fundraiser, she got really excited. The idea is that the kids will collect pledges, like $1 per lap or quarter-mile, and the day of the run how far she runs will determine the total donation to the school. The school is running this fundraiser themselves, so the school gets to keep 100% of the money they raise. This is especially important. The school is only in its second year of operation, so supply stores and book inventories are low, and budget cuts have hurt all the schools around here as well.

Even worse, I haven’t collected any pledges yet, and Tru is getting discouraged. Her classmates are bringing in pledges, and she’s not! Because of this, I am calling on all of her family members to donate $1 per quarter-mile so that she feels like she has contributed to her school. It will cost you a total of $4, and Tru will have a sense of accomplishment not only for running 1 mile, but also for helping her school in this time of need.

Please respond and donate $4 to Tru’s school! She’ll be so appreciative of it, and I know she’ll feel so good about running for her school.