making space for creativity
This is the beginning of a guest post mini-series on our family’s favorite games by Amy’s husband, Evan Hays–middle school social studies teacher and board game enthusiast. I am not sure if you are aware of this already or not, but you happen to be living through a board gaming Renaissance. If I already had…
I love to remember a romantic anniversary. All spring I’ll give my husband Evan a running tally of our anniversaries: late February was 16 years since our first awkward date to see the play The Good Person of Szechwan, early March was 16 years since I asked you to drive me to an Ash Wednesday…
This is my 5th year of participating in the fun Instagram hashtag #onedayhh, where you take and post a picture an hour of your ordinary day. Thankfully, my kids still think me taking a ton of pictures of them is really fun, and they were pretty patient with my mommy paparazzi (more than my husband…
This year for our anniversary in May, my mom took Jackson out for a long morning walk, and we snuggled with our 2 week old daughter on the couch, and got to watch a movie and eat bacon wrapped dates. It was heavenly. Our movie consumption after Jackson was born dropped severely and involved watching…
Today is our 9th wedding anniversary and Jackson’s half birthday. It seems fitting to celebrate both as interwoven as they have been these past six months. It’s hard exactly to describe how having a baby has changed our marriage, some moments have been the most beautiful and then hours later some of the most…
Somehow, miraculously, I have arrived halfway through this pregnancy. It has been both slow, especially those first exhausted weeks, and at the same time so fast, particularly the second trimester with its summer trips back to DC and up north to the shore of Lake Superior. Overall, I would highly recommend the…
Amazingly, spring is nearly over here in Wisconsin. The tulips and daffodils are long gone and even oak trees have leaves out now. I am climbing out of the hibernation of first trimester—today I’m fifteen weeks pregnant, and I am slowly feeling better. This week was also the last week of my sister-in-law’s fulltime job,…
This past weekend we drove down to Illinois for the third week in a row, this time for a wedding. It is, by my count, the 20th wedding Evan and I have attended together. The day we got engaged we went to a wedding, and every year since we’ve been witnessing the sacred vows…
Seven years ago yesterday, we got married. I was too excited to sleep. I woke up at 3:30 am, convinced that no one was going to remember to get communion bread. So I tried to sleep for another hour. I couldn’t believe that I had actually made it to that day, through the 9…
It is the last days of our intact apartment. Kind friends keep asking how the packing is going for our upcoming move in 15 days, and I smile and say we haven’t packed a thing. My husband, Evan sometimes will add that we’ve steadily over the years tried to get rid of things we…
In honor of our sixth anniversary last Sunday, here is the beginning of the story of Evan and me from seven springs ago… We met at history honor society. He was a tall handsome senior. I was a curly-haired, blond junior. In such a small program, we were both surprised there was a…