Dana Burland

Am I overcompensating with Mom Holiday Magic™ this year due to… this year ? You bet I am. We spent Thanksgiving this year apart from our extended families . Beyond making a special dinner of all our usual Thanksgiving favorites, here are some kid-things we did to celebrate: Turkey Day We talked about “Turkey Day”, how this is a special day we spend together being thankful and eating a delicious big dinner. Turkey Pendant I strung a homemade turkey across the kitchen as decoration. Our Thankful Turkey We talked about what we were thankful for together, and everyone in the family submitted “thankful feathers”. A couple heart stickers a certain 3-year-old was awarded for above-and-beyond kindness to his certain 11-month-old brother made their way onto the turkey too.  Family At The Table A tad too close to Thanksgiving Day I had the idea to mail family members self addressed/posted envelopes asking them to send back a drawing of themselves. As these trickle in through the m...

You will remember we wore masks for a while, but you won’t know the rest. You’ll remember what we did , but you won’t remember how long the stretches were when we decided it wasn’t safe to see family or friends. You vaguely know a “turkey day” is coming. You talk about it at daycare and have gathered the hint from my not-so-subtle turkey banner hanging in the kitchen. But you don’t know it’s a treasured family holiday we’ve decided to spend solo because we love our family too much to risk seeing them in person. On Thursday we’ll set our table for four like we normally do. I’m making a special dinner of all our favorite sides, but you probably won’t notice that. We’ll ask you to take “one more bite” and to walk your plate to the sink when you’re done eating. We’ll probably Facetime family and you’ll stay put for 0.00284 seconds of it. Nothing will seem out of sort to you. As your parents, we’re your “ambassador” as you navigate everything new. What you don’t know is sometimes y...

Yeah buddy, I did it. I built an indoor kid’s rock climbing wall in our basement. See?     This was absolutely, no doubt about it, a COVID project. A need for more indoor, at-home activities plus a dash of parental sadness for the things I know my boys are missing out on, with a sprinkling of a personal need to proactively create as a way to stay positive equals rock climbing wall. This was by far my biggest project in scale, but right at my ability in skill. My steps for this project were: Build an exterior frame on top of the interior studs Construct the rock climbing wall Fix the climbing wall to the exterior frame I bought these rock wall grips , which came with hardware too. It gave me a good starting point for everything. Our basement allowed for a 4ft x 6ft climbing wall, so I had a sheet of furniture-grade plywood (pre-sanded and smooth) cut for me at Home Depot to size, plus a few 2x4s 6ft tall for the exterior frame. After determining a climbing hold ...