snow pictures

Sledding



Cold weather gear



Snow swinging



Some things never change. Jack loves to frolic in the snow!

monday (but a different monday)

Today I put the kombucha mother I have been growing into a decent amount of black tea with sugar and water and a little mature kombucha and she is now fermenting and growing in a glass bread pan on top of the microwave. Old meets new, so to speak. I think I will give a look in about a week and test her pH to see how acidic she is.

We are getting quite a snow storm here with several inches of snow falling and even lots of wind and gusting. I was joking around earlier about snowfall in Portland, but really it is coming down in such a way that most people should even stay off of the roads. I think this means (or hope!) that it will stick around for a day or two because Eva is desperate to make a snowman. Last year we got nothing. The year before? we had snow for several days complete with sledding. This year Samuel asked for snow pants and put them on willingly and asked why he didn't want to wear them before. I said I wasn't entirely certain but it had seemed so important to him, why push. I mean it is really only snow pants we are talking about here. And lookee here, age 8 1/2 and he puts them on voluntarily! I tell you these things will happen if only we can wait!

And I made this little lady today. I used an angel pattern I found online somewhere? and was going to call her a fairy but I am not sure if that will stick because Eva looked at me askance each time I said fairy but when she saw the finished product she was quite pleased. We shall see. I want to make a few more and yet they are a mite tedious so I am not sure how many I will actually make. It can be so much fun to make one small thing but I feel I am pushing it when I make more...I guess I can break it up with some other knitting and see what happens.



She is about 2 1/2 inches tall with wild hair covering her wings!

trees

It is the time of year when you drive down the road and wherever you turn, you see trees strapped to the tops of cars, launched out of trucks, toppling into houses, decked with garland and lights, ornaments hand made and store bought. Festive corn popping, hot chocolate sipping, holiday music choraling. Cats wishing for catnip, dogs dreaming of candy cane shaped bones, rats hoping for more hmmm food? Children talking of this toy or that, imagining the magic of Santa Claus. And now this house, this home, is no different. To the season we add our own tree. I have mixed feelings about bringing these trees into our homes in such quantities this time of year and would very much like to bring a live tree into the house one of these years and return it to the wild after the holidays as a planted, sustained, living tree. Someday. For now I do the best for the one we have chosen, covering it with love with my family, allowing the memories of Christmases past to flood my mind, anticipation of the Christmas to come creeping in. If I think too hard about Christmas I become as excited and enthusiastic as my children, unable to fathom that I must-wait-for-how-many-more-days until Christmas?

wednesday

this and that

We went swimming today. Eva has been so wanting to swim and we checked out a place nearby here and it was fun. I am going to try and take us once a week or at least once every two weeks because she loves it and I think it relaxes everyone so much. There is another place even closer to us that I intend to try next week. If I can keep it quick and painless, it is more interesting for Samuel as well.

Eva has been playing with paper dolls quite a bit lately. She has a couple of ballet sets that have famous ballet costumes to dress the dolls up in and was asking to reread the Firebird today. I am always up for rereading Russian stories so I put it on hold at the library. Time to check out The Nutcracker again as well.

Samuel took most of yesterday and half of today to play through the Lego Batman game which he is giving a thumbs up on. He is playing through on free play now. The Mushroom game, while interesting, was not quite a fit for him at this point.

We are going to see The Wizard of Oz tomorrow that is being put on by a local children's theatre and of course Friday is the homeschooling bazaar we have been looking forward to for so long. Samuel is pretty well set on goods at this point and still wants to make raffle tickets. Eva and I are planning to make brownies, I guess tomorrow!

Samuel has been powering through the wii games in an attempt to find one, another, any that he loves. They don't carry these at the library (yet!) so we got a little deal at Blockbuster to allow us to try out as many games as we want for a month. So far we/Samuel has tried out several-

Wii Sports- of course. Lots of fun for Samuel and daddy together.

The Force Unleashed- a huge hit and sadly very short. He finished it in just over 6 hours and replayed it a couple of times before we took it back.

De Blob- This one is good and he played it for a couple of days. We exchanged it today for some more options but we may get it again.

Boom Blox- was not appreciated, although I have to stress that Samuel was waiting tensely for The Force Unleashed and nothing compared to that anticipation...

The Clone Wars: Lightsaber Duels- so so, not as good as The Force Unleashed.

Mario Galaxy- nice game but Samuel was tired of it pretty quickly and took it back. He is not currently a Mario fan, although he would like to try out Mario Kart, if they ever get it back in.

Legend of Zelda- he was sadly not impressed and I think there was just too much reading at this point for him to enjoy it

My Sims- not the right kind of game right now, although cute, and Eve really enjoyed making the characters and setting up. A little frustrating to use and too much reading.

Sims Castle- the same as above only not quite as much.

Transformers- not great game play for Samuel at this time, issues with the camera and general frustration.

And then today he got Lego's Batman, which he is enjoying immensely. He wasn't interested initially because he is not a big Batman fan, but the Lego game play is just his style and he loved the Star Wars games and the more recent Indiana Jones game they made. I must stay I am happy that he found something he is enjoying playing. The alternative, constant frustration, was starting to drain away my enthusiasm.

He also found Mushroom Men: Spore Wars today and I am curious about this one as well. We are still reading Mushroom Planet books and really who knew someone made a game about mushrooms fighting?

I would like to try out Animal Crossing as well as World of Goo, which I just saw something about. We still have a little over a week of our Blockbuster thing so that gives us plenty of time. Oh, and there is interest in Wii Play because it is so similar to Wii Sports and the replay value is thought to be high.