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.