April has absolutely whizzed by. At the beginning of it, we were still recovering from our trip to Hong Kong and the end of spring break. Fortunately, we had only a short week back at regular life before Easter and a long weekend. We had a fairly low key Easter this year, which was just… Continue reading 2026 Highlights: April
While January felt shorter than usual, February has felt longer. Our weather has continued to be quite mild - some cold days but no snow and not much rain. It's lovely to see the days steadily get longer. On days when I close at work I'm now no longer doing so in complete darkness. We… Continue reading 2026 Highlights: February
Quite often, January looks mostly like the above photo. It's grey, it's rainy, the days are short. It's a month that seems to last forever. We started out a little like that, with days where it felt like the sun never fully rose before it was dark again. But rather than a month that dragged… Continue reading 2026 Highlights: January
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)
Karissa Reads Books 