Real Time to Remember: Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice

...nary a puppy dog tail to be seen for miles.


Cadence, with her archetypal girly voice, "Do you know what I'm going to be when I grow up?"

Big Sister, distracted by clearing the New Year's Eve feasty table, "What?"

Cadence, clarifying, "...when I grow up to the tippy-tippy top of the sky?"

Big Sister: "What?"

Cadence, all dreamy, "A mermaid."

Now that's an impressive New Year's resolution.
Happy New Year, everybody!

P.s.

I forgot about snapshots on my phone. This also finally happened.

Should I Be Blogging Right Now?

No, I should not.  I should be tackling all the dirty dishes in the universe that had a party in our kitchen yesterday.  There. Now that I've dispelled the awkward tension, "Onward, ho!" to blogging!

This Advent season has been less quiet than I'd like, but my heart is fed by nightly worship and family liturgy around the wreath, and tomorrow we light three candles instead of two.

We don't yet have a Jesse tree, and I've been slacking on Jesse tree readings each morning. This third week of Advent, I'll try to find all the loose strings and tie them in a clumsy knot. Each season is different. In this one, I find myself scattered all over, but our Father meets me there. He gathers the flighty, harried, and lazy bits of Abigail, and He will knit something together from the mess.

St. Nicholas did mysteriously arrive to fill shoes, right before bedtime. Surely, something important must have delayed him.

Not quite a week later, we celebrated St. Lucia Day. Pippi was going to take her turn as St. Lucia this year, but seeing how frighteningly grown the older girls are caused me to decide that Millie should have another turn, just in case she strikes out on her own before the honor circles round to her again.


She got six hours of sleep, sweet girl, but sallied forth, anyway.

Annika was slumbering too deeply for a first try to awaken her.

Millie moved onto the boys, who were more easily aroused.  Aidan was grumpy for 30 seconds until he woke up enough to see the lit candles. Then he immediately jumped out of bed and ran into the girls' room, excitedly shouting, "Wake up, allbody! Wake up, allbody!"

Hot coffee and St. Lucia buns for all.

Even Susannah got some, though she stayed hidden under her covers until I agreed to honor her camera-free wishes.

When sunrise arrived, though, all bets were off. Hail, Susannah Wren!

Dipping In Their Toes

Through a series of fortunate events, the three oldest girls were invited to participate in a nativity play put on by new friends of theirs. A sixteen year -old girl is writer and director, and her family and a few friends rally together to put on the production in their grandfather's barn.


Last year, the performers ran through their lines only once before the show, so this year, they increased that and met together four times. The first performance was last night, and, in it, they ironed out some glitches that are common to the first dress rehearsal. By the second performance, they were old hands, and it was such a pleasure to watch.

I grinned through the whole thing. We've never been part of a homeschooling group, being too far from town to navigate back and forth without it having an overall detrimental effect on our family routine and needs, so this was the girls' first chance to join other home learners in something of this sort.  It has been nothing but exciting and enjoyable for them, and even though I hated driving them home from practice on dark country roads, I would do it again in a heartbeat.

The play reminded me of Tasha Tudor's reminiscences in A Time To Keep, except even better, because there were flappy chickens and runaway goats in the mix, too. Another favorite part was an unconcerned cat who strolled onto the stage and groomed itself in between Mary and Joseph during an emotionally fraught scene.  

They all did such a marvelous job. If we didn't live 30 minutes away, and if gas for the van didn't cost so darn much, I would have gone to all four charming shows. The girls are probably glad I didn't. :)

Aaaand, these are all the snapshots I have.

Leftovers

After taking pictures of St. Lucia Day, the play, and stuff Annika's trying to sell for race money, I have only these two snapshots leftover.

Skylark, this morning, who always demands to eat her oranges as rings.

And, no, she's not a big sister, more's the pity-- the first girl in four who's worn this shirt under false pretenses!  ;)

Naptime

Quarter reports are done!
But first-- a timely blog post.

I have only a handful of lackluster snapshots for the first six days of December, but here they are so that  I may hereby fulfill my blog-stated desire to be "caught up by the new year."  St. Nicholas pictures will come later because...well, never you mind why.*


We lost power for a few hours, and Aidan woke up to a magical, candle-filled wonderland.

Playing board games by candlelight during power failures is a family tradition.

Our neighbor got a buck right before the ice storm and asked me to snap a picture.

Yup, now that's a proper country family, right there. (Nice hat, Zyanna.)

Skylark keeps trying to sneak outside dressed in variations on this theme. No worries. We only have a foot of snow.

Speaking of Lark, yesterday morning she climbed out of bed on her own, and I walked past the steps to see her grinning down at me. I took a few lousy pictures to remember how sweetly pert she looked.

*John has been gone since yesterday, I stayed up reading until 3 o'clock in the morning, and I totally forgot about St. Nicholas Day for the first time ever. Don't worry. We're going to Grandma and Grandpa Owen's this afternoon, and I feel confident that St. Nicholas will arrive to fill the shoes while we're away. We're probably just his last stop this year. ;)

For Aponi

It's not as good as that package I have yet to compile, but it's something!

These are two November bits lost in electronic cracks. I found them and decided not to post them, but then I thought of you! So, for you:

Piper made a carrot-flute.

Skylark had a nasty run-in on Thanksgiving morning with a rabid cow.

(After I stopped the video, I told her that a cow did NOT bite her hand, and then she pointed at me and said, "You bite my hand." Hm. She'd scraped it on the crib, though, so that's not any closer to the truth.)

November

I'm glad December has arrived. I sometimes feel rootless in November, especially since Dad died, and even with the cold and wind and ice, it feels good and right to have a season set off with sharp delineation.

Advent is upon us, and so a fresh year begins, with Light quietly waiting for us in the dark.

From tonight's reading:

Awake thou that sleepest, 

and arise from the dead, 

and Christ shall give thee light.