Christmas and Snow Fun

Cousins Eatin Cookies on Christmas Eve

Great Grandma and Baby Violet

Pen and Ashley Putting the Candles on Steve's Cake

Steve's Cake

Very Late on Christmas Eve

Christmas Morning

Violet's New Silk Blanket and Arlo the Aardvark

Penelope's Fairy Dress

And Her Princess Dress

Tom and Charles Opening Gifts

Pen Playing With Her New Horses And People

Violet with Sophie the Giraffe

Violet and Steve

Two Girls in the Sled

Our Happy Front Window

Snow Ball

Walking Through Our Neighborhood

Walking Through Our Neighborhood 2

Mama and Violet

Violet wondering about the snow, and looking incredibly like my brother Charles as a baby.

A Snow-Pen and Snow-Vi

Snow berries

The inevitable snow tantrum

Pen's new watercolors.

Sledding on Daddy's Birthday

Whoa!!!

Snowy road in colt park

Cold Geese, Colt Park

Vi on Pissy The Horse/Reindeer

Pen making Daddy stuffed shells for his birthday dinner.

Sweet Sisters

We went to Steve's Mom's on Christmas Eve, but we have been home ever since. We have been enjoying the quiet of not having to do much of anything. On Christmas day my brothers came over. We exchanged gifts and listened to new C.D.'s and played with new toys. We had a nice dinner together. Penelope loved everything Santa brought her. Violet got a darling aardvark we called Arlo and Pen got a stuffed horse named Matilda, as well as lots of little horse figures and little people to play with. She and Violet both got a nice play kitchen and "Pissy" the horse to share.

We got quite a bit of snow and some snowmen were made and a little sledding was had. We have been watching the birds enjoying all the seeds we gave them on the Solstice, and keeping busy inside with new books to read, new paints to try out and lots of paper snowflakes being made.

Steve's birthday came following a blizzard so we didn't make our usual trip to Boston, but we made a really great dinner here and did some sledding in Colt Park. Thank goodness for netflix, one of Steve's favorite movies, Across the Universe, arrived in time for his at home birthday to go along with the all day long Beatles music we enjoyed.

Today we spent doing freezer paper stencils, so we all have a bunch of new t-shirts that we love. How I wish we had a fireplace for times like these!

Merry Solstice

Making a Paper Tree

Making a Solstice Sun from a Paper Plate

Making Treats

SO EXCITED!

Up Go The Lights

The tree is so tiny, but to Pen it couldn't be more beautiful!

Discovering Tree Decorations We Made Last Year

And Favorite Old Decorations too

Reading a Very Animated Version of Jingle Bells

Hard at Work Making Wrapping Paper for Solstice Gifts

Playing Music For Vi

Violet Waiting To Go Outside

Pen Giving The Birds And Squirrels Their Solstice Gifts

All of Us

This Snowball Has Daddy's Name on it!

My Wild Angel

A Snowball Pelted Steve

Feeding the forest animals

Hanging paper snowflakes

Very Cute Girlies

Pretty Violet

Shoes and hat made by Mama, Shirt made by big sister

Dress from Mama

Pig gets gifts too!

The girls in their matching Solstice gifts

Vi in her new shoes and hat

Fire ready to go

Tom in front of the fire

Steve in front of the fire

Violet in front of the fire

Penelope, eating Solstice cake in front of the fire

Our Yule Fire Blazing

We had such a lovely Solstice this year. We put the tree up the day before, and Pen was so cute discovering things in boxes that she remembers from last year. We worked for a long time on our gifts for each other. The rule is everything has to be homemade. Steve and Pen made me a lovely photo scrap bookie thing that I love. I made him a t-shirt and some hand balm. Pen made Violet a t-shirt that says Baby Sister, both girls made a fabric lunch bag for him with their hand prints on it. I made the girls each a hat from recycled sweaters. Violet's is cashmere and Pen's is angora. I made the girls matching dresses and Pig got a dress and hat too. Violet also got some wool felt baby shoes.

We started the day with hot blueberry muffins Pen and I made, and cocoa. Pen made some hand decorated wrapping paper and we wrapped gifts. Then we went out to spread seeds for our bird and squirrel neighbors. We all went for a beautiful walk in the woods, and we brought seeds for the forest beasties too. When we got home we made popcorn and opened gifts. Then we spent the afternoon quietly making paper snowflakes. I made a pot of chili and some corn bread, Pen helped me decorate a Solstice cake, and Tom came over for dinner. After dinner we all headed out for our fire. We started it with a garland of sorts we had hanging in our living room. It was red and green strips of paper with things written on them. It was sort of a combination of our thankful tree from Thanksgiving and something Soule Mama did that I liked. We wrote things we are thankful for, one for each day leading up to the Solstice. And Pen put the whole thing on the fire before Steve started it. It was so nice to sit quietly together under the beautiful full moon and enjoy the peace. I really love celebrating the Solstice in this way. Wishing love and light to everyone this holiday season! Peace.