A SiWinter Week with Baxter

Wild Snow Dog

Laughing Baby

Rolling a Snowball

Bringing out the Carrot

Adding the Nose

Some Lovely Hydrangea 

She is Complete

Baxter, Violet, Penelope and Ly-Loo

Ly-Loo the Snow lady

The required post snow lady building cocoa and cookies.

Baby would rather have an avocado.

Feeding Baxter

Having our lunch at the Children's Museum 

Having a Rest

Oh, my! All the dots and stripes. Who dresses this baby, anyway?

Stomping in the sand.

It was SO cold and windy!

Baxter didn't mind the cold.

Chilly Baby

Penelope longing to cross the bridge. Mama said no.

We spent the last week at Baxter's house. James and Kathryn were back at school and their parents were in New Mexico meeting their new grandson, so we went to take care of our furry friend.

The day we arrived there was a HUGE snowstorm. We played in the snow with wild Baxter, and made a snow lady that Penelope named Ly-Loo. Penelope made so many snow angels, but couldn't convince her little sister to lie down in the snow for anything. Violet just kept yelling NO! when Pen tried to get her to do it.

We spent long hours lying on the floor, Pen and Baxter cuddled up, reading books from the library. The girls loved taking turns playing the piano while the other danced. Penelope listened to and danced to a No Doubt c.d. as loudly as I would allow, especially the song Hella Good - over and over and over again. We went to the Children's Museum one day, the library a couple times, but mostly stayed with Baxter.

We also got to watch real t.v. I found the commercials frustrating, they seem to go on for much longer than I remember. I also thought it was interesting that at each commercial break I was treated to one for cream cheese, followed by one for sour cream, followed by one for a weight loss program. Hmm. And the ones for prescription medications - why is that allowed!!??!! And Nick Jr. had me fuming with it's constantly repeating slogan of "it's like preschool on t.v.!" ugh! I was excited to find Little House on the Prairie, Penelope loves the books, but unfortunately the episode we tuned into was the one where Laura is wildly riding her horse, Bunny, through a meadow and runs into a barbed wire fence and Pa has to shoot the horse because she is injured to badly and is suffering. When I told Steve about it he said "well, at least it wasn't the episode where Mary goes blind". Then one day we watched The Walton's. It ended up being the episode where Corabeth is a raging alcoholic and while driving her daughter Amy and Elizabeth Walton home she passes out and drives into a ditch and 13 year old Elizabeth has to drive them all home. On a brighter note, Penelope fell in love with a PBS animated Anne of Green Gables, and I realized how very much like Anne Penelope is and I can't wait to read her that book when she's a little older. And one night, after the girls were asleep I watched an amazing biography on Louisa May Alcott. So that was the good and the bad of t.v. I think that except for PBS I can totally do without it quite happily. I wish Netflix had more PBS stuff! And, really some of the nature type shows are pretty spectacular, but now I am having nightmares about drowning polar bears and global warming.

Anyhow, we are glad to be back in our little house (oh, so tiny house, it seems just now after a week in a house seven times as big as ours). Penelope wants her own dog so badly, and I want her to have one. Not just yet, though. And we are glad to be back with Steve, who only spent two nights at Baxter's with us because he started back up with school last Monday. We will begin with homeschool preschool tomorrow after a two month break. Penelope is very excited and ready for it, and I am too.

Amaryllis

All from one potted amaryllis we bought on sale for five dollars after the holidays. I tried to capture each development, but it bloomed while I was gone. They do their blooming so fast, it is a constantly changing thing of beauty, so spectacular, and so necessary during the long winter.

First Snow of 2012

Excited to Play in the Snow

Not Excited to be Bundled

Happy Snow Angel

Throwing Snowballs at Vi

Snowball for Daddy

Front Step

Snowy Mittens

Tasting Snow

Happy Snow Baby

Tough Walking

Mmmm

Cold Baby

Shoveling the Driveway

We had a bit of snow yesterday. Enough to make things a little slippery and give the girls a chance to play in the long waited for white stuff. Penelope was thrilled and delighted, remembering how to make a snow angel and snowballs. She wanted a snowman but it wasn't the right kind of snow for that.

Violet was less happy about it all. She was unhappy to have all the layers, she was unsure about walking in Pen's old boots, slightly too big for her, on the slippery and uneven surface. But when she saw all the shrieking and jumping and throwing of and tasting of snow by her sister she started to think it was fun too.

We are having a big snow today, so there will be more fun and pictures, as well as more wet, drippy snow clothes all over the house drying, more shoveling and more slippery driveway/sidewalks. I am glad Penelope has, at last, the snow she has been longing for. I'm also glad that the snow waited for so long to fall, we could have already had a month or more of this stuff. I like the snow, but every year that goes by I seem to like less snow a whole lot more than a lot of snow. It is pretty to see out the window, falling thickly, creating a blanket of pure white and magic over everything.

New Hats!

I am slowly moving out of my comfort zone of knitting socks and scarfs. I knit Steve a hat for the Solstice, and that went well. I have had some hats for little people that I've been wanting to try for quite a while now, and I finally knit one for each girl. They are the loopy pixie hat from the book Baby Beanies by Amanda Keeys. I knit all of Penelope's hat during the drive to and from the Eric Carle museum while Steve drove. And today, while we were driving around doing errands and grocery shopping I knit Violet's hat. I was amazed at how quickly they knit up. I learned a few new techniques in this project, but they were pleasingly simple anyhow. And they are SO CUTE! Both girls love them. It is the only hat Pen is wearing right now, and Violet is really delighted with hers, probably because she has been seeing her sister wearing her hat for a couple days and now has her own. I am wanting to make another hat immediately!