The sky over Portland was doing that annoying gray-mist thing on the Saturday of Sam’s 8th birthday, but inside my kitchen, it was pure yellow chaos. I had flour on my leggings, a half-inflated pineapple balloon drifting near the ceiling, and a serious dilemma regarding the spongebob party napkins set I’d just unboxed. See, I’m…
My son Leo turned 11 on March 12, 2025, and as a safety-conscious dad in Denver, I knew a backyard carnival was the only way to satisfy a group of pre-teens who think they are too cool for “little kid” games but still want to win a giant stuffed bear. The wind was whipping off…
My living room currently looks like a glitter bomb went off in a Skittles factory, and I’m not even mad about it because Leo’s face when he saw the rainbow party hats for kids lined up on the counter was worth every single stray sequin. The rain was coming down in that grey, horizontal way…
Fourteen eight-year-olds staring at you with expectation is a level of pressure most corporate executives will never understand. Last Saturday, June 14, my backyard in Denver transformed into a high-stakes tea parlor for my daughter Lily’s birthday. I am the guy who reads the fine print on toaster manuals, so naturally, I spent three weeks…
Twenty five-year-olds in white t-shirts are basically a herd of highly caffeinated cats who think they know jiu-jitsu. I stood in my Houston living room last March, watching my nephew Leo try to “karate chop” a stack of napkins, and I knew I had two choices: spend five hundred dollars at a local dojo or…
My living room smelled like a soggy Amazon warehouse last October. Cardboard. Everywhere. My oldest, Leo, turned 11, and he’d decided he was too “mature” for the local bounce house but still wanted to hunt for gold. This is the struggle of the middle-school transition years in Portland, where it rains 150 days a year…
My kitchen counter was a literal disaster zone on the morning of October 12, 2024, as I tried to finalize the cowboy birthday invitation for my son Sam’s 10th birthday. There were coffee rings on the cardstock, half-eaten Cheerios from my four-year-old, Leo, and a stack of “Wanted” posters that looked more like they’d been…
My living room looked like a Serengeti stampede hit a glitter factory. It was March 15, 2025, and my son Leo was turning two. Twenty-one toddlers were about to descend on my North Denver bungalow, and I had exactly $47 left in the party kitty after the cake deposit. My mission was specific: I needed…
My Austin backyard was currently a construction zone of cardboard boxes and red spray paint, and my golden retriever, Barnaby, was sporting a very accidental “Mario red” smudge on his tail. If you live in a city where a cup of coffee costs seven dollars, the idea of throwing a Pinterest-perfect bash for a toddler…
My living room looked like a pixelated explosion happened on March 15. Green streamers hung limp from the ceiling fan, and the smell of cheap Scotch tape filled the air as Leo and Maya, my eight-year-old twins, argued over who got the “diamond” sword. This was our third year doing a block-themed bash here in…
