Playtime

A young reader and his family, including a few other kids, came into the Edmonds Library while I was there to pick up the Find It! Scavenger hunt flyer and as it turns out, renew my almost-expired library card. This young person said “Daddy, this is amazing,” motioning to all of the books in the…

This week, my kids went to camp. It was pretty exciting to get a taste of the before-times and see kids find familiar faces and new friends even though they’re still wearing masks and some camp activities have been amended to follow safety guidelines. We are also starting to see more and more of the…

As I get older, I struggle more and more to choose the name of the member of my family I am trying to address on the first try. Add in over a year of COVID and the “ding” associated with the kids being let into their Zoom classes and I sometimes resort to “tall one”…

Any heat wave brings out the “I had to walk to school, uphill both ways” in me. I had an infant during the heat wave of 2009 that you’re hearing about in the news this week — the hottest day on record was 103 degrees on July 29, 2009. Over the boring retellings, which I’ve…

On our kitchen table, there is a piece of foam core with rows of different color Post-its, one Post-it per item needing to be done for school this next week and another set of rows for To-dos, Works in Progress, and my favorite row, “Dunzo.” Our current design is based on Kanban, which is a…

Grouping local options for each week’s Edmonds Kind of Play is usually pretty easy. Sometimes it’s library or Parks and Rec offerings, other times activities based on the weather we’re expecting. This week, there doesn’t seem to be a way to tie a bow around vaccines, the Edmonds School District’s eLearning program, Sno-King Youth Club…

Spring fever is described by Wikipedia as “any of a number of mood, physical, or behavioral changes, which may be experienced coinciding with the arrival of spring” with restlessness and laziness among the options. Anyone who has been in a classroom around this time knows the feeling and those of us trying to find new…

On April 22, the Edmonds Family Fun Center posted this announcement on Facebook, “After having to close our doors over a year ago due to the pandemic, we must share the difficult and sad news that the Edmonds Family Fun Center location will not be re-opening and has permanently closed.” They go on to thank…

Do you remember your high school orientation? I remember parts of mine so vividly, in part because of the seriously dated outfit I wore, including a goofy hat, and that the school felt big and different. Secondary students in the Edmonds School District, 7th through 12th grades, who chose a hybrid schedule will return to…

National Library Week is April 4 -10 and there are certainly reasons to celebrate it. The Edmonds and Lynnwood Libraries are now offering limited in-building services on top of the current contactless services. Recently, I stopped by to pick up a hold at the Edmonds Library and was offered contactless pick-up or the option to…

Shortly after quarantine started, it felt like we were seeing more and more birds in the yard. Our initial intermittent efforts to identify the birds we’d seen over the years — Steller’s Jays, different kinds of woodpeckers, an unidentified hawk, robins and a ton of “little brown birds” — took a more intentional turn once…

On the school front, we went from telling our high schooler to prepare to not go back in-person this year, to “do you want to do an in-person hybrid model,” followed by “if yes, did you grow out of all of your pants suitable for leaving the house?” Turns out, we don’t have enough pants…

Planning things for the summer feels as hard to comprehend as the anniversary of one year in a global pandemic. Information on both what options lie ahead and what we have already done seems to be showing up at the same time and feels dizzying. On the same day, I saw a social media post…

During our most recent snowy weekend, I got a text from a neighbor that included a video of her two little ones playing in the snow wearing snowsuits that we had handed down to them that had been previously handed down to us, they were now on their third family. I find this kind of…

Each year when the Edmonds School District Calendar comes in the mail, I put it aside as a “present” for a friend of mine who uses not one but TWO of them in her house each year. When it came this year, it felt so weird to be looking at a school-related calendar that I…

Last week was the end of the first semester for the Edmonds School District. Semesters weren’t even really on my radar until I had a middle schooler and didn’t have the full “I hope you know that this will go down on your permanent record” feeling until I had a high schooler — last weekend…

This seems to have been a particularly rough week for just about everyone I know. On social media, I have seen lots of talk of hitting the “Pandemic Wall.” In fact, there are a couple of recent articles about it — there are also articles about it from earlier, so I suppose we could all…

Before we get to some local school registration information for the next school year, I wanted to share a library event for those of us taking care of children during the pandemic. Sno-Isle Libraries is offering an “Issues That Matter 2021” series. The next free installment, “Issues That Matter: Recognizing Anxiety and Depression in Kids”…

On Thursday, I was in Half Price Books picking up a hold (the Hunger Games prequel because I am trying to use books for kids and teens to break up the doomscrolling),. I had an exchange with some young shoppers about a viral video they had playing on their phone (they for sure don’t call…

Throughout 2013 we added little pieces of paper into an old spaghetti sauce jar with fun or special events or accomplishments written on them with the plan to open the jar on New Year’s Eve. This might have been the only year we were able to fill the Memory Jar, an exercise in gratitude mixed…

Either more people are decorating for the holidays earlier than normal this year or they’re more comfortable posting it on social media. I have seen a few houses lit up already, which seems earlier than expected, and I saw post after post on social media of people putting up Christmas decorations last weekend. I also…

Our Halloween routine has looked the same for so long, it’s safe to call it our Halloween tradition. We took pictures with the neighbors across the street, met a group of friends on Sunset Avenue in Edmonds, took a group picture, and knocked on doors while taking in the view, heading back on 2nd Avenue…

Earlier this month, Edmonds School District Food and Nutrition services, which provide seven days a week of free breakfast and lunch to kids ages 1 through 18 at local schools and community locations, said that many parents are asking if they “‘choose school meals’ will they be “taking away from someone else who needs it?”…