Family Life

Daniel came running into the room this morning complaining bitterly about Joel hitting him with this pitchfork-shaped toy. Stabbing him in the back, so to speak. Debbie calmed him down and explained that yelling and screaming was no way to sort things out, that he should use words, that he should say to Joel, “Please [...]

Some nights the kids get to play in the bath. Tonight was not one of those nights. Tonight it was assembly-line style. Daniel, the oldest, was ready first: into the tub, dunk, lather, rinse, haul out onto the mat, dry, pajamas, done. Daniel was at the haul-out phase when Joel wandered into the tub, and [...]

We’ve spent all summer watching the hedge grow up and out. It has been the kind of thing that inspires the following conversation:
- “We should really trim the hedge.”
- “Mm hmm. It’s getting a bit long, isn’t it.”
- “This weekend, then?”
- “No, we’re busy.”
And so the weeks pass. Spring was dry and so the hedge [...]

This afternoon we went to the local Swiss National Day celebrations. We go every year, eating lunch on the grass in the shade of a tree, balancing paper plates on our knees, striving to keep offspring (three now!) from wandering off into the crowd. There’s a stage and rows of chairs set up in a [...]

POST OF AN OLD DRAFT. Originally dated Sunday, April 13, 2008.
Sunday evenings are a little different now. Instead of the usual church service, we meet together for prayer. Still the same venue, but instead of a congregation sitting in orderly rows facing the front, where a man stands behind the pulpit to address the crowd, [...]