And I thought I was going to be lonely on Christmas break.

 Not with Ava and Eliah here for three sleeps!

The snowblower made some great paths to chase each other on.

Could it be a more glorious day for Christmas vacation? 

And we were able to squeeze in a chopstick lesson.  I only had one set of children's chopsticks.  They immediately figured out how to share it without my help at all.  Eliah is 5 so he gets 5 bites and Ava is 2 so she gets 2 bites.  They ate really well, too! 

Snow Like the "Olden" Days

Sunday was a beautiful blue sky, still, cold day after a fresh mountain of snow had just fallen.  As Aaron, Eliah and I worked at pulling the 2+ feet of snow off the porch and garage I couldn't help but be transported back in time to those fabulous snow days that found us working just as hard building snowforts in the ditches and commencing with snow wars.

We would play outside by the hour in our two pairs of corduroys, two pairs of mittens, scarves wrapped around our faces and our boots with plastic bags in them to keep our feet dry.  I remember my boots chafing around my calves until the skin was raw and snow getting stuck between my mittens and the cuffs of my jacket freezing my wrists.  But all that fabulous white, white, white snow...we loved it!

I'm sure Mom remembers us all coming in at the same time, draping our soaking wet paraphernalia everywhere.  Can you smell those wet mittens yet? 

But, we all loved being outside and Mom loved us being out there!  Admit it Mom, you know you did!

Eliah and Oskar were also born for snow, but Ava...not so much.  Katri thinks it's because she doesn't like all that confining snow gear.  Now, if our little girl could just be naked in the snow that would be another story. 

Who knew?

Last Christmas I had the joy of helping my friend, Diane, decorate her Christmas tree.  Granted, I had always thought she had the most beautiful tree in all Christendom, but I didn't really understand how she made that happen.  So, when I arrived at her home that long ago December day, she had a myriad  of boxes neatly labeled in the living room and it was my task to put the tree together.  It went quite well.  It was of the prelit variety, but oh my, that would never be enough lights.  So we added several strings....can't remember how many now.  We started opening the boxes and distributing the simple but shiny colored glass balls, making sure to get them at different depths, some very close to the trunk. 

After that I can't remember the order of events, but we kept opening boxes and talking about where all the ornaments had come from over the years.  The sweet Santa ball in the picture is from her childhood.  It held little treats, but only for good little girls and boys.  I don't know that she ever got anything from it, but I digress.  At one point, I said something like, "I don't think we can get another ornament on this tree."  To which she replied, "Oh, sister.  We are not done yet!" and disappeared down to her basement to return with some more enchanting ornaments.  Weaving the richly colored ribbon throughout the tree was a work of art in itself.

When I returned to my sparsley decorated tree I vowed to get some more glitz for my tree at the after Christmas sales.  And I did.  I had so much fun looking for some shiny ornaments to fill in the gaps and I did quite well.  It turns out my most delightful buy was the snowflakes that catch the light and throw it all over the tree and I got them for the amazing price of six for 25 cents.  Now, after all that work of decorating my tree, I have to learn to leave it up until February like Diane does.