a surprising number of our family hikes have been spearheaded by the youngest member of our troop. when you combine his near indefatigable stamina with the ambitious end-visions he gets in his head (e.g. i want to hike to the tippy top of a mountain), the boy is the driving force of many of our family adventures. he is also the motivating factor that oftentimes gets us to the end as there isn't a ...

the thirty pound junior high backpack


walking to the bus


anthony's waiting smirk


anthony hamming, aleo perfecting


proud and relived parents with their kindergartner

you're welcome to try to find a young human with a better natural disposition than our aleo but i'd recommend looking for a less futile exercise to occupy your time. ...

growing up, i didn't think much about my wedding day. i always considered it a day about the bride and i carried this sentiment right to the doorstep of my own ceremony. but once the day set in and all of our family came together, and all of our friends appeared, no matter where they were in the country and everyone had such great smiles, happiness, and high hopes for us, i found myself swept up i ...

i have a friend who is an outdoorsman, both out of interest and profession. whenever i have an expensive or uncertain purchase to make, i reach out to him and each time he answers. virtually every time i hear back from him (as i try not to pester him too often), i'm astonished anew at his breadth of insight and depth of his thoughtfulness. being a collector of thoughtful objects i wished to add th...

bella's grandma, marty's mom, is a master pie maker. given her years of making them, i reckon a momma-nat homemade pie is about as good as you'd taste anywhere. a few fridays back bella and her grandmother made an apple pie together. on the following saturday afternoon bella walked onto the porch carrying a plate with a slice of pie and some ice cream. having seen her already partake in several sn...

the thing that strikes me about this picture is the necklace around anthony's neck. i'm struck because it is alex's necklace. it is very much alex's necklace. fact is that necklace proved to be (and continues to prove to be at the time of this writing) a very important token to alex. alex went through a few month stretch of separation anxiety when he was younger, like six and seven. this necklace ...

kids surely do revive what is special about summertime. without their energy and excitement to be out of school, as adults we tend to lose that youthful shine during those three special months (given we're still locked up under the fluorescents).

and please note alex's super awesome red pinstriped, seersucker shorts ... worn backwards. such style can't be taught. ...

when young i was permitted to do little more than hold the tools. i remember thinking that sucked. and later in life when i was handed a hammer or drill, i proved pretty unimpressive. in dramatic over-correction, i (and marty) have pushed our children to hammer nails, drive screws and drill holes. while they won't be putting and master craftsmen out of work, they also will rarely turn down the cha ...

this was back when marty only had one mother's day, as a mother, under her belt. it also marks a time when her fancy chair and half only had one, maybe two, scuffs on it. since then both marty and that chair have shouldered a good number of mars and nicks showing the love they have given to a house full of needy and sometimes inconsiderate humans. both are still standing strong and both are more c ...

anthony has been described as a lot like bella but all boy. only those who are familiar with our eldest child's early years have a proper sense for what this implies. ...

this is what i saw one day when i turned to look out my office window. did i mention my office is on the second floor.

when we first moved into our house this wispy tree didn't even come to the base of my office window. now the tree's top peeks over our roofline. i've barked at many a child on many a day trying to protect this handsome and small dogwood. it looks like all my coddling has ...

thankfuls. thankfuls are something we (try to) do at the beginning of our dinners. this is where we go around the table in a very casual manner and while plates are being filled and everyone in turn names a thing or two they are thankful for. sometimes there are lapses in this ritual, surely, but inevitably someone in the family pulls us out by making the observation that it's been awhile since we...

the front of our home has a porch that extends the full length of the house. when we first set eyes on the house it was not something that either marty or i noticed or commented on, like "hey ... cool porch." after moving in and through to this day, the porch has proven to be one of the best amenities of the house and where we've spent countless hours. in fact, we've spent so much time sitting, re ...

i don't think marty will ever be accused of over-protecting or mollycoddling her children. and for as much slack as she leaves in the line, the woman has yet to have had to rush one to a hospital. granted there have been a few moments where i though it might be in order but when i asked marty about it, her typical response was "just rub it" or "that one might need a band-aid". she would then turn ...

marty and i have adopted a few house rules. typically they revolve around love, support, and respect. one of the earliest house rules (which i believe i lifted from a friend) is the "nothing permanent" rule. this rule connects to our intention of delivering our children, when they are of age, to adulthood free of permanent luggage such as tattoos, unplanned children, or prison records so they may ...

it's hard to remember a time before one or both of these ladies were part of my world. it's also hard to fathom a world without one or both of them. ...

having grown up in colorado, i surely remember taking advantage of many an overflowing gutter for boat-running and dam-building, but such affairs always took place during or after a rain. in saint louis and all the august-beating backyard pools, this storied child's affair can take place on any day, rainy or blue, that someone needs to drain a pool. and no one will ever say those dearmitt boys did ...

over a decade ago i made the decision to close my kid's dedicated photo galleries after their fifth birthday (and one hundred photos). now that anthony has crested both of those milestones i find myself without an outlet to capture and share the occasional image of my people. while maintaining this website over the past twelve years has tortured me in a number of ways, it has also spoiled me in many more. my expedient ability to fix this sudden case of the jitters being one of the good sides. thus, allow me to introduce you to our family scrapbook.

in looking for anthony's hundredth, and final, image for his personal gallery, i scanned my picture archives, wanting this last one to be solidly representative of his personality which i thought i managed for both baya and aleo. a few of his pics along the way have captured his spirit like here or here. after spinning through my folders though i didn't find any that hit the mark. so this last weekend i called him to the foyer asked him to stand on the landing thinking i had the chops to capture my son's essence, which is always about him.

what you're about to see is one of anthony's more peculiar takes on the world. he has it in his mind that when someone says they are going to take his picture, he, the subject, is supposed to strike and hold a series of poses, a different one for each picture. and as you'll see each and every one of his poses are without argument bizarre. i'm not sure what input or stimulus led him to create this repertoire of poses but whatever it was, i've never met a person who came to the same conclusion.

below are a few of the shots taken that day on the landing. after each beep from the camera he quickly and precisely re-contorts his body to the next chosen position. at the conclusion of the shoot, i didn't feel any of these hit the special mark i was looking for and i thought yesterday's image better captured the mood of our boy. but just because they weren't suitable to close out his gallery doesn't mean they're too highbrow for the monorail.

to round out this year's content, i'll leave you with my favorite photo from our colorado trip (since i've been chatting it up all week). i still remember when bella walked back from rinsing her hands, she commented on how ice cold the water was, and this in august. i'm thankful marty and i had a year with enough health and friendship and opportunity for our children to feel the cool bite of a rocky mountain lake. it is a small mark of many other fortunes. may next year prove as fruitful. best to you all.



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we were a third of the way into our summer before marty and i got enough of a pause in the whirl to ask one another if we would be taking a family vacation this year. in consulting our finances which could, given eight years of living on one income, be best described as a meager, the answer was no. a few days into this revelation (truly read despondency) i recalled an email i received earlier in t...

for those that asked about yesterday's sassafras picture, re-shown below, here's a more revealing picture of what he was climbing. these tolkienesque huts were erected in front of the art and architecture buildings of the university by our home. we passed the recently completed structures while coming back from roller blading/skating in forest park (and headed to breadCo for hot chocolate). i had seen the early stages of their construction a few weeks earlier but dismissed it as something not meant for me. coming upon the completed version my foot quickly moved to the brake and i pulled over for a closer look as they definitely jump out in front of your eyes. seeing the grandeur and stability of the edifices one of my kids, i forget which one, called for an impromptu game of ogre. the kids won in a best of three affair, anthony winning the third and pivotal round. and we concluded that when we play ogre in funny shaped buildings like this, instead of a city park or swimming pool, it will be called smurf ogre.



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this year's halloween was most lively. i attribute its sheen to the ages of my children (10, 8 and 5) as they are all members of the peak, invested halloween years. i've been eager to capture the night since returning from trick or treating last week but haven't made the time until now. this i attribute to the lowly monday night draw which is just the worst possible halloween day. it's so sucky in...

back in august i was contacted by an agency who licenses photos for commercials and film projects. the woman in the email asked if i would put her in contact with a past everyman winner as they would like to use her image in a chevy commercial. as i occasionally get these sorts of emails for everyman entrants, i thanked the woman for the inquiry and passed her info on to the entrant. i never heard anything back from either party and assumed my email for the entrant was dated. then last night while watching game six of the world series (amazing!!!), i saw a chevy commercial and in it i saw the photo i was asked about. few things could have made that game more enjoyable, but that surely rates.

the original photo, a third place from the attic winner back in 08.

and the commercial it was used in (photo is at the 40 second mark).