About ten years ago, all of the families that belong to our temple were asked to make an appointment for a portrait session in conjunction with the creation of a new directory. I thought it was a great idea: at the time, I think we had around 350 member families and a photo directory is a wonderful tool for learning the names of people with whom you aren’t already acquainted. We were also promised a free 8 X 10 portrait for coming in. The four of us went in one evening and posed for pictures, and that was that…until the pictures came back. I was horrified. Actually, horrified is a…
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Listen To Your Mother 2014: And We’re Off!
I have said it a thousand times, but always enjoy repeating it: co-producing Chicago’s LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER SHOW (with Tracey Becker, the Phoebe to my Monica!) for the past two years has been a life-altering experience in the best possible way. We are an awesome team and I truly can’t imagine working on the show with anyone else. We know how to have fun. Of course, we also know how to get down to business, even when we’re just acting like we’re working for the camera. (Pictures courtesy of Sabrina Persico, by the way.) All of our work sessions, whether they are on the phone, in person, or via…
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Odds and Ends
I just have a bunch of bits and pieces (odds and ends, whatever) that I wanted to get out there because I’ve been all over the place this week, so I decided to post a “Brain Dump” (as my sistuh-from-anuthuh-mutha calls it) today. This could also technically be a Friday Fragments post (as Mrs. 4444 has done for years every Friday), but I’m not linking up over there because I don’t have the time to go read the posts by all of the other participants and I don’t want to be unfair. (But YOU could! Go! Do it!) So anyway, here we go. Yesterday’s post, a note to the Zumba…
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Listen To Your Mother 2013 Videos are LIVE!
It feels like we’ve been waiting FOREVER for the 2013 LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER videos to be made public on YouTube, but it’s only been two months. In fact, with more than twice the amount of cities as last year, the videos were ready earlier this time, so it’s doubly exciting! I watched a couple of minutes of each of the Chicago videos (didn’t have time for the whole show today!) and was overwhelmed with pride all over again. By the way, the National Video Sponsor is The Partnership at Drugfree.org (thank you!), and all of us at LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER are proud to help share their message of…
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You’re Welcome.
I know I have a few “long-time, since-the-beginning” readers of Suburban Scrawl out there, and I figured that–on this very special weekend for our family–you might as well feel old like I do. You know, since you’ve been around. When I started blogging here at Suburban Scrawl in 2007, my younger son was twelve years old and in the sixth grade. Today, he is eighteen and a high school graduate. Who wants to go grab some dinner? I hear they have pretty good early-bird specials at 4:30. Then we can watch the news and head to bed early. (Also, thanks–TO ALL OF YOU–for reading and following my family’s adventures.)
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The Post That’s Not About How Time Flies, Even Though It Does
I have written many times about how quickly time flies. That’s not what this post is about, though I can’t write about life’s milestones from my perspective as a forty-something mom of an eighteen-year-old and a nearly-twenty-one-year-old without inadvertently injecting a little bit of that sentiment. I mean, at this very moment in this very house we’re preparing for the fact that the kid in this picture, the one on the right who it seems was just starting preschool yesterday, is graduating from high school this Sunday. This being our second time around the block with this graduation business and his being a different kid, I’m not at all surprised…
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My NBC Nightly News Debut…Sort Of
So we weren’t actually ON Friday evening’s NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams as scheduled because our segment got bumped due to breaking news. (“Sigh…but that happens in the news biz, you know”, I type knowingly, because I have LOTS more personal experience with the “news biz” than I did a week ago.) Tracey and I were in the Valparaiso, Indiana Buffalo Wild Wings during the broadcast*, and we had just talked our server into changing the channel on the huge tv that hung on the wall above our table (from NBC Sports to NBC local) when Ann Imig (National Director/Founder of LTYM) sent me a text letting me know…
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It’s Bathroom Reveal Day!
FINALLY. Our DIY bathroom renovation has been officially complete for about two weeks now since we hung the curtains my mom made for us (the final element!) (thanks, Mom!), but every time I have thought about taking pictures, I wasn’t anywhere near the house. Jim and I are so very happy to be finished with this, the largest DIY project we’ve ever tackled. We did every ounce of work in the room with the exception of the new tub installation; we left that part to our plumber. After hours and hours (and hours) of work and in just a few short months that seemed like forever, this room went from…
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It’s Not About The Bike. (Well, Maybe A Little.)
Cycling is on everyone’s minds this week and though I don’t feel the need or desire to use any of my real estate here on Suburban Scrawl to share my opinion about he-who-shall-not-be-named, I have been thinking about bikes and thought I’d tell you about one very special bicycle. When D was about six, we decided it was time to purchase a bike for him. Jim’s main hobby has been cycling for, well, forever, and even though we weren’t about to spend the money to get a top-of-the-line bike for our kid who would outgrow it before the payment was even a memory, we certainly spent some time in the…
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Proud Moments In Parenting
I was always adamant when the boys were little that I wasn’t going to be one of those moms who always put the kids’ music on in the car. I mean, we had a couple of cassettes (YES, I SAID CASSETTES: my boys were little in the 90’s.) that were in the genre of Children’s Music–and by “a couple”, I literally mean “two”–but for the most part the soundtrack for our time in the car was made up of Top 40 radio and tunes from the 1980’s and early 1990’s. I figured that the boys would grow to like whatever music we listened to, and I was right. Of course,…