Today my kids (and my husband) go back to school so our Winter break is officially, truly over. It's a little bit painful, those transitions back to regular schedule. We were delightfully lax over the past 2 weeks - with bedtimes, wake-ups, junk food intake, and screen time. There was a fair amount of reading… Continue reading Farewell 2025 and Hello 2026
At the end of November, I celebrated my 40th birthday. It's both a momentous occasion and also just another day of the week. It's a birthday that people seem to expect you to have a lot of feelings about and I guess I do but I also am not quite sure how I feel. The… Continue reading Karissa is 40!
It feels deep into November around here. It starts to get dark around 4pm and while we've had some hours of brilliant sunshine, other days it feels like the sun never really rises. There's been a lot of rain. We've added extra blankets on our beds and I've started lighting candles in the evenings. As… Continue reading 2025 Highlights: Into Autumn
Last week our Rose turned 8! When Rose was about 4, she was in a drop-off music class. She was 2 at the start of the covid-19 pandemic so this was the first activity that was all hers. Parents were invited to sit in one day and so I sat against one wall and watched… Continue reading Rose is 8!
School is back in session and autumn schedules are commencing. It's still warm around here but our skies are hazy from surrounding wildfires. Fall is here and so I'm offering up one final post of summer highlights. Our summer was full and wonderful and went by far too quickly. Some years, by the time September… Continue reading Summer 2025 Highlights: Part 4
Hello, I'm continuing the saga of Hiking with Dad. Once Rose and I had completed our hike of Tin Hat Mountain, I was home for two nights with the whole family (in which I frantically continued to build a fence) and then Pearl and I headed off on our annual adventure. Our goal this year… Continue reading Guest Post: Sunshine Coast Trail 2025 Pt. 2
This is a long, non-bookish post featuring a lot of pictures of my family and dinosaurs and beautiful scenery. Don't say I didn't warn you. Let's begin. It started with a t-shirt from the thrift store. As many kids do, our oldest, Pearl, went through a dinosaur phase when she was younger. She loved watching… Continue reading Summer 2025 Highlights: Part 3 (Road Trip Edition)
The last couple of weeks since my previous highlights post have been both full and peaceful for me. While Peter took the girls on epic hikes, I stayed home with the other kid and had a lovely, relaxing time. We planned the hikes around my work schedule so that I could be at home while… Continue reading Summer 2025 Highlights: Part 2
Hello, it’s another installment of Hiking with Dad. This year Rose and I covered part of the Sunshine Coast Trail that goes up Tin Hat Mountain, down to a place called Fiddlehead Landing, up another big hill to Confederation Lake, and then a final long descent to Inland Lake where we parked our car. I… Continue reading Guest Post: Sunshine Coast Trail 2025
Summer is, hands down, the best time to be here on the Sunshine Coast. Every year we struggle with the fact that summer is our time with a looser schedule and so our opportunity to travel, versus the fact that it's so darn nice where we already live. School finished in the last week of… Continue reading Summer 2025 Highlights: Part 1
Karissa Reads Books 