He's glad to be home.
Really, honest. What? You think he misses 85 and sunny every day? Oh how boring. What? You think aqua marine waters top ice crusted mud covered once was snow? Oh man, you just don't see the value of family. He missed us...he is glad to be home.
The best part of playing out in the cold is definitely coming home and drinking hot cocoa ~ complete with crushed candy canes.
Oh yeah, I see totally see a whip cream mustache coming on...
It had to be done. First, we totally got the shaft here in the North East with snow. Every news story is snow snow snow. Every blog I read, from Oregon to Utah to Maine...yep, buckets of snow. Us? Wintry mix. WHAT IS THAT? I'll tell you what it is....mean. The boys and I had a fun "inside" day planned...more coloring, building with blocks, cookie baking, hair dying (ooops, did I say that?). Anyway by noon we were (literally) climbing the walls. What? You don't think preschool boys can actually climb walls? Stop over. I threw on their coats, first we hit Wegmans for some lunch and then to the park. I pulled up, turned off the car and announced to the boys that I wanted them to get out and run. Run and run and run. Run until you can't run another second.
We forgot hats...
and gloves. But we didn't care. In fact, Cooper even said "hey mom this is actually fun"!
while Duncan went a little more crafty and made his mother a bouquet of flowers.
Me? Oh I can't resist anything having to do with paper...add photos and I'm in heaven. I have actually been working on a 25 days of December album - documenting each day with photos + words. I plan on sharing a few photos of the project but I need to take the photographs in the daytime...lighting in the evening in my house is just not conducive to that sort of thing.
Hoping you all had an equally enjoyable evening.
Blessed: to capture photos like this...
Anxious: for the season to slow down and hurry up and get here!
Ready: to give, to overflow, to tear, to smile, to enjoy, to love, to sleep, to create, to catch my breath.
Okay so I skipped the tree shopping story. It's inevitable, year after year we flip flop between cutting down our own or buying a pre-cut. Maybe it's because we live in the Northeast, but there seems to be this underlying sense that if we all hop in the truck, drive 30 miles to a tree farm, cut down our tree and haul it home, we are somehow more "authentic" than those who pull up to the roadside stand, pay $30 and tie the beauty on the roof. Last year we did the authentic route (as we do pretty much every other year); we went out as a family, I took pictures, we drank hot cocoa while they wrapped up our tree...it was angelic...if you could over look the kids complaining the minute we got out of the car because they were cold and we couldn't find a straight tree without gaping holes to safe our life. Cooper had to pee (thank goodness Duncan was still in diapers), we had to drill our own hole in the bottom once we got it home because the "authentic" guys don't have that fancy machine. We never were sure if our drilling was off or if the trunk was just crooked to start with? So anyway, when the discussion came up this year I asked the boys what they wanted to do...Cooper said "mom, can we just GO, PICK IT OUT and BE DONE WITH IT"? And so we did...off to Tebb's we went, $36 and she is perfect. And we didn't even have to get out of the car long enough to catch a chill. Stay tuned for next year when we will forget how miserable it was and feel the need to once again be authentic.
You really can't resist the magic of a Christmas Tree. The boys keep telling me that they have the prettiest tree of all. I caught Duncan just sitting and staring at it this evening. He admitted that it's really hard not to touch (and play) with the decorations. Not even the best Christmas movie seems to trump sitting, staring & dreaming.
Handmade recycled ornaments.
