Bits about life in the Hoff family, often (but not always) connected to our adoption journey.
One of my kids has recently decided to go vegetarian, which has sometimes been a challenge for family meals. I sent out an SOS to my newsletter, and a reader, April Richards, suggested dropping a meat substitute into this tasty zucchini skillet recipe to keep everyone fed.Thanks so much, April!Zucchini…
Some things about parenting are much more fun as kids get older. Concerts are one of them. They start to sound pretty good. When the kids are tiny, it can be hard to sit through their performances, but with near-adult young people, performances can be an actual pleasure. That was…
This is one of my favorite views. I've been able to regularly enjoy it in the summers since I was younger than my children are now. Why? Because my mom's family (and now my parents) have this time-share condo in the Colorado mountains. Maybe it's the sound of the river (yes,…
The transition to summer always brings an odd shifting in relationships and activity. School has ended. What marks our days now?Routines have shifted. It seems as if I'd see the kids more, now that we're all here all the time. But, that's not necessarily the case. I still have work,…
Just after Christmas, our eldest brought home a kitten, so now we have two pets in the house. Our cat and our dog don't get along particularly well together, but every so often there's a moment like the one above. I think, in some ways, our family feels a bit…
When you've adopted a kid from a culture different from your own, holidays can be a challenge. Both familiar ones and unfamiliar ones. (I mean familiar to the adults in the household.) I've been thinking about this as we've made our sixth attempt to create a satisfactory Spring Festival season…
Where did the adoption stuff go? You may have noticed that there are only a few Kid Stuff posts on this new version of my website, and all the old content has disappeared. (Unlike the Bookshelf posts, many of which have been updated for the new website.) Well, it's like…
On the way home from school, J was crossing the street on his bike. A car hit him. He was OK, but he didn’t want to ride a bike to school anymore.Getting a driver’s license was hard. J took a class, but the teacher spoke only English. He didn’t understand.…