Edmonds Kind of Play

When the snow showed up in the forecast, I became glued to the weather app on my phone. Not only was I not ready for snow days at home that close to the break we just had, but we had a hockey tournament that required traveling over one of the passes. When the forecast doesn’t…

The gear shift between the pre-holiday rush, the post-holiday haze, and the 0-to-60 pace of a full week back to school has left our house feeling road-worn with a mix of waking up to an alarm you didn’t expect. While I think we appreciate the routine and getting back to the friends and our extracurriculars,…

We did a long overdue garage clean-out over this winter break. It made for lots of trips to the dump and to drop-off donations, spurts of extended kid screen time, and (what I consider) hard decisions about what should actually stay. I have a really hard time getting rid of the kids’ things, be it…

It is hard to talk about “Betwixtmas,” what Urban Dictionary defines as “the week in-between Christmas and New Years Day,” without sounding like I-need-a-vacation-from-my-vacation guy. But, when Googled, there are survival guides, articles, hashtags and, of course, there is a full week of winter break left in the Edmonds School District. If you’re looking for…

Last week, on social media I saw an article about how “Holiday Magic” takes its toll on women. It immediately made me think of the Lifetime Christmas Movie I saw  this month called On Strike For Christmas with Daphne Zuniga, who you likely either remember as Jo Reynolds, resident of Melrose Place or Princess Vespa, resident…

Over the last couple of years, the idea of having an artificial Christmas tree has become increasingly enticing. Having the smell of a freshly cut tree in the house is definitely one of the best parts of the holiday. However, the watering, clean up that extends throughout the year because pine needles are relentless, and…

Christmas movies turn up on the Lifetime and Hallmark channels ahead of the holiday. Though of the two Lifetime channels we have, one is still playing a movie that involves a cheerleader who murders or a mom who murders or — as in the movie I checked right now to make sure I wasn’t exaggerating…

This afternoon, I picked up a copy of Lynda Hunt’s Fish in a Tree, the story of a student with dyslexia, at the Edmonds Bookshop. It was one of those interactions that went exactly right on all levels. Despite my calling ahead of business hours, when the reminder showed up on my phone, I was…

When my kids were small and the costumes were still toddling spiders or mini firefighters, my main goal was to get as much use out of costumes as possible with the most amount of pictures. Once the kids started school, their yearly school event added an indoor option, which has a photo booth, so I…

About a year ago, the Rotary Club of Edmonds announced it would suspend the Edmonds Waterfront Festival. The event had run for 31 years at the Port of Edmonds Marina. Then-president David Kaufer explained the group decided to take that step “after carefully evaluating and analyzing the return on investment, both in capital and volunteer…

Thanks to a new zero period and lack of previously expected transportation, we’re adjusting to a new back-to-school routine. With more moving parts, there are more days of the week where we repeatedly call out things like “homework,” “PE clothes,” and “turn that off now” as if we’re auctioneers or playing some sort of parents…

In an email I got from the Foundation for Edmonds School District, I found out that over the last year, the Celebrate Schools 5k grants funded projects benefiting thousands of students, across all grade levels. For example, it went to “afterschool reading and math tutoring, a Festival of Cultures, 5th Grade Law Day, Family Math…

This past week while waiting in line at my most-frequented grocery store, I heard the checker tell the group ahead of me, with angst or dread maybe, that “summer was over,” in part due to the weather we were having that day, and also because Seafair was over. When it was my turn in line…

I don’t want to break the seal on “Back to School” topics and not because I’m an eternal summer kind of person, but because that means it’ll be Christmas at Joann’s and Michael’s any minute. Plus, I am still recovering from seemingly endless 4th grade book reports and jockeying Skyward/Canvas/Google Classroom as the parent of…

I recently went to my first school board meeting. As someone who has carefully avoided manning the games at our school’s Harvest (read: Halloween) festival since 2011, that is certainly not something I could have forecasted, but there I was taking my three minutes during a public comment portion. The road from occasional, reluctant classroom…

Just out of high school, I worked in the dining hall of a retirement community – the decor looked a lot like a Marie Callender’s, with coordinated chairs and carpeting and decorative touches only seen in a restaurant. My great-grandfather used to come over to my grandparents’ home for dinner, so until I took this…

Given just how expensive summer can be — be it childcare, camps, vacations, or the incidentals at a touristy place — I try to look for fun but free-to-low-cost things to do. This past weekend, the event that fit the bill was Seattle Bot Battles, a free event at the Seattle Center featuring a few…

Last summer, we piled into the van and headed to the Granite Falls Library for Hogwarts Summer School. We ate snacks, watched a magician, and the kids made Harry Potter-themed crafts. Since it was about a 45-minute drive, we turned it into a bit of a day trip, stopping on the way home at Funko…

After my middle schooler suffered a concussion in his main sport this winter, we found out just how important exercise and, additionally, a team sport/group activity was for him. He went from hour-long practices twice a week and a game on the weekend with locker room time before and after, to not only no sports,…

This week, I am writing my column about summer reading inside the library. I’d like to say that it is because I am going to cover all of the local summer reading options and the fun Sno-Isle Explore Summer events and I wanted to immerse myself in the environment that I was writing about, but…