Tag: kids

We Won! Common Sense Prevails in ‘Bus Dad’ Case.

Today, the BC Court of Appeal released their reasons for judgment in my case against BC’s Ministry of Children & Family Development. In short, the Court allowed our appeal and we won. The Court declared the order made by the…

Virtual Reality Tour of the Condo

[Unfortunately, the VR tour referenced in this post is no longer available, as the provider, Van Chernen Real Estate Photography, went out of business. I’ve been unable to reach them, despite repeated attempts. My apologies.] One of the more frequent…

Want To Help Me Run For City Council? Here’s How.

DUDE … after watching @kirstendirksen ‘s Vlog post last night how can you not be the wise choice for a sound and sustainable future for Vancouver. https://t.co/EYPbWniu5l — Chris Istace (@Stasher_BC) April 9, 2018 Those kind words from a Twitter…

Do I Force This Lifestyle on My Kids?

An interesting thing happened last week. Perhaps a milestone in notoriety for this site, or merely a part of its evolution. I’m still deciding which. CTV, one of Canada’s national broadcasters, airs “The Social,” one of those midday panel chat…

Compact Living Breeds Empathy in Kids

Today I was sitting at my dining room table working from home as I often do. The house was quiet except for some light music, the sun streamed in along with muted city sounds below and I was thoroughly engrossed in…

I Filled an Empty Space By Making My Own Art

This is the second article in my Life Redesign 2016 series. Last time I wrote about how the kids are learning to cook family dinners (we’ve got another lesson starting in 40 minutes, as I write this). In upcoming articles, I’ll detail more tweaks…

How My Kids Learned To Cook Dinner

The demise of a long term relationship is always a great time to take stock of how you’re embracing life. Even notwithstanding that, I was long overdue for a hard look at how I was living versus how I wanted to…

10 Purchases to Make Condo Kid Life Easy

If you know me at all, you know that I’m a bit of a minimalist. It’s this sense of minimalism that might make you think I’ve been robbed if you come over and check out my place. But despite my minimalism, I…

Car-Free and Carefree in Vancity

I’ve got five kids, and in today’s one-kid society this means I get a lot of unsolicited advice that starts with “You’ve got five kids! You can’t possibly do [fill in the blank].” This is especially true when it comes…

Teaching Our Kids Transit

These days it’s common to hear people of a certain age (my age, let’s be honest) waxing nostalgic about the old days. We walked to school alone, rode our bike for miles, played until well past sundown, lit everything on…

Crafting an Art Space from In-Suite Storage

When we first moved into this condo, one of the more curious aspects was that it had “in-suite storage.” So instead of storing all our unused junk in a chicken wire-surrounded, padlocked area on P1 or P2, we got a small,…

How To Rent a Family Friendly Condo

I’m always eager to help people find a new place to live, in part because I’ve done it so often myself that I feel compelled to re-use this expertise somehow. So in the midst of doing my latest impression of…

The Cloakroom Comes Home

My husband and I struggle with hall closet storage in our apartment; our coat/shoe closet won’t stay closed, for jackets and footwear spilling out. Our 3-shelf closet organizer has no room for more shoes when people visit. My small collection…

“Where Are Your Kids’ Toys?”

One question I get asked a lot is, “Where are all your kids’ toys?” When we first moved into our condo, for a long time we had a couple giant tupperware bins in the corner of the living room that…