Bursting!

Today was the second meeting of our cooking project group for 4H. Evie is the Youth Leader. Today's group was about cookies! Evie wrote a fabulous presentation about measuring, ingredients and methods. It was her idea, she did the research, she wrote it all out (almost 1000 words). She rehearsed, she made changes, she had demos. I am so proud of her I could just pop!

My confidence in her has never wavered. Just as I knew she would walk and talk, I was just as sure she would figure out how to communicate what is important to her through words on a page. That unshakable confidence doesn't mean there haven't been times (okay, a lot of them) when I wonder "AHHH! Should I be forcing this? Teaching her? Insisting on putting words to paper?" Generally I get a hold of myself and just watch. Over the last year her desire to write has soared and her spelling is like someone turned on spell-check in her brain. She has always been a voracious reader and now those words are running around her brain and coming out in new ways in new media.

Amazing stuff. Her presentation was FABULOUS! She was confident, funny, clear and really informative. Then everyone made cookies! What could be better.

Can you tell I am proud?

Overall? Quite grateful.

Well, it has been an interesting few days. Our home owners insurance won't pay for the looming tree to be removed (preventatively) but would be happy to pay if the tree falls and smashes our house in two--presumably more expensive than just cutting down the tree. So, we will change a few plans and pay for the tree to be removed--sad. I will be able to plant blueberries on that part of the yard now--happy.

We had gingerbread building with 4H, a great concert from Evie's friend (violin), Sankta Lucia Day (best ever, that girl can make coffee!) and decorating.

Off tonight for a walk in the dark to the home of friends for the next installment of Harry Potter.

More 4H tomorrow. I will be bragging about Evie in tomorrow's post.

I am trying to slow down for a bit, take it all in and ENJOY!!!!!

Not the usual snow day

Woke up at 1:30 with a start, a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I heard our giant Hackberry tree start popping, ran to get Scott and Evie out of the upstairs and at 2:10 am 1/3 of the tree came crashing down, taking all the power lines with it. (That's our house on the left side of the last picture.)

We are okay. No life or property majorly damaged. We got 16" of heavy snow, the day was spent waiting for help. We got it. We got power back after 15 hours. Neighbors helped neighbors. The Madison service crews ROCK.

We are exhasuted, waiting for the paperwork headaches of insurance tomorrow. Two-thirds of the tree still standing, definitely threatening the house, blizzard predicted for tonight, keep your fingers crossed. Hopefully the rest of the tree will be down by the end of the week.

We are grateful for our new windows that kept us warm in our house. We are grateful for tree work we had done last year that allowed us to have a house today. We are REALLY grateful for all the hard working folks who came to our aid.

We really need to go to bed.

Happy St. Nicholas Day!

St. Nicholas was a good man, with a good heart. He is the patron saint for everyone from children to sailors to prisoners. We celebrate his feast day as an opportunity to remember how wonderful it is to be able to give, both materially and of ourselves and our time.

Every year Scott and Evie bake a sweet bread in the shape of St. Nicholas' head, this year we ate it with milkshakes!

This afternoon we will go, with grandma and grandpa, to a concert of holiday music in a beautiful church downtown. Then out to dinner and home to decorate the tree a little. I love our holiday traditions.

Ringing Bells

One of our favorite holiday traditions is ringing bells for the Salvation Army. I have to admit that I don't agree with all the politics of the SA but I do agree with the work they do. When I lived in Zimbabwe I lived with a very strict SA family for about a month. They firmly believed that charity was the way to personal growth. For our family, ringing bells has been an easy way to give to our community and interact with all sorts of people at the holidays. This year we got to ring at our very favorite place (I had to reserve in August). It is in a busy mall, there was live music, beautiful decorations and TONS of people. (Also the world record holding gingerbread man--24'--real gingerbread!) We went out for dinner afterward then came home to get ready for tomorrow. It was a wonderful family day.

Oh wow!

We joined Netflix. We'll be back when we get over the novelty. Wow are we having fun!

It's About the Child

If I wrote about everything we did today you would have to sit down, maybe even have a drink. It has been a wild one! The Tomten showed up today. He declared it puzzle day and we were off and rolling. We did some REALLY hard logic puzzles, some we solved, some we didn't.








Evie wanted to go swimming so we did. She is teaching me the butterfly. It is really hard, she is really good.

We came home to put up our collections of creches. To me, the miniature scenes of family life, celebrating the birth of a baby are what the winter holidays are all about. There is promise in every newborn child. Hope, dreams, adventure and possibilities come with every new life, every new season, every new moon. The creche scenes remind us to follow the children--"within the child, lies the fate of the future." (Maria Montessori)





Every tiny family is my favorite, the one Scott made me out of hardware is probably my very favorite. Evie assembled a few new ones out of critters we had in the house. One had three wise women (!), one had two Marys and all had myriad people and animals streaming in to see a new baby.

The hope is in the child. Follow it.