Good Busy

Last night I either had dinner with:

1) Two Vikings with reddish beards (a cowboy Viking?)

2) Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill (American Tall Tale Night?)

or

3) my cousin and brother (they're both six and a half feet tall but I have a sneaking suspicion Harvey outweighs Tabor)



As a rule, I don't like being too busy.  Sometimes when everything that's keeping you busy is wonderful, it's not bad though.

This weekend we celebrated my favorite red head's birthday, my brother Tabor and his lovely wife Katie and their charming girls came to visit and tonight we're going to cheer on Harvey.  My first NFL game.  (I won't really know what's going on, but at least I'll be cold.)  I will happily be with Tabor and Adam though (the latter will probably buy me a hot chocolate) so how could I not enjoy?

More details to follow.

Comfort and Joy

I used to read a lot to my children.  Back when they were little.  They'd snuggle next to me or on my lap. It was always my favorite part of any day.

Except then they all got too big.  They read their own books and are no longer captivated by chunky board books made for chubby hands to hold.  No more Goodnight Moon.

Sigh.

(I do still read to Mark every day with varying degrees of interest on his part.  Lately we've been reading The Best Christmas Pageant Ever and you can't not love that book.  He begs me to keep reading when we finish a chapter.  That makes me happy)

In December, we unwrap a Christmas book every day to read as an advent calendar. With our increasingly busy children, sometimes we have to catch up for missed days.  We don't have long stretches of time together like we used to.

Sigh.

But the other night, Braeden sat on one side of me, Emma on the other.  They each nuzzled close to me.  Mark came and proclaimed he was sitting on my lap.  I was as happy as a clam.  (A slightly squished clam...Mark's bigger than he used to be.)

As I craned my neck around Mark to read the story, I thought that I was probably in the best place I could be...in a nest of my children, reading.

Occupy My Van

The other night, Adam and Braeden left to go home teaching.  A few minutes later, I left for book club.  I walked out my door and instead of seeing my beloved van, my gleaming chariot, I saw Adam's car sitting forlornly in the driveway.

They had taken the van!  The van with heated seats.  The van that's so pleasant to drive I love doing errands.  (OK, maybe that last bit's not true.)

They'd left the decrepit car that you need instructions to drive because the gas pedal sticks and you have to carefully engage the parking brake using a prescribed method of simultaneously lifting and gingerly pulling on a spring because it's broken.  The same car Adam will drive until it's absolutely un-drivable. (Because he's like that.)  The car that hasn't even had an engine since 2006 and instead uses hamsters running on a wheel for power.  (OK,  maybe that last bit's not true.)

I called Adam immediately.  "You took the van?"

(Yes, there's the whole what's-mine-is-yours-thing but that is my van and the car that looks at me with contempt is Adam's.)

Adam apologized for taking the van, he'd forgotten I'd be leaving.  I said it was OK. (I'm so magnanimous sometimes!)  Adam said, "Now you'll know how the other half lives."

I could hear Braeden chanting something in the background.  I said, "What's he saying?"

Adam said, "He's saying, 'We are the 99%!'"

So I realized then that the Occupy Movement, which has so far been only in cities as far as I can tell, has infiltrated the suburbs.

It has infiltrated my van.

Pikkujoulu 2011

Monday was Pikkujoulu.  It's our "little Christmas" celebration.  Pikkujoulu is the hard to pronounce way to say "little Christmas" in Finnish.

We celebrate our little Christmas the way the Dahl family celebrated Christmas Eve when we were growing up.   It's more of an American-of-mostly-Swedish-Norwegian-British-descent celebration rather than a Finnish celebration.  But I think having a hard to pronounce Finnish name for it adds a little something.

We had a cute shepherd on hand...

Or a goatherd?

Horace Vandegelder...still the best pet ever.  He requires nothing and is even remarkably quiet.

We had piano playing...

Some meditation?

And a grandma that helped make things better.

Braeden throwing his head back in laughter makes me happy.

We also performed our own Carol of the Bells with my bells I got for Christmas last year.  I wrote down "sheet music" for the bells and Braeden played the song on the piano.  For some reason, it helped if we were all hunkered down on the floor together.

Emma's not pictured but she participated too.

Geri joined in with us later and we switched around some.  I played the piano and Braeden got a turn on the bells.  If you heard dogs barking in the neighborhood that night it could have been a reaction to our concert.

Adam read to us from the Bible:

Emma has taken to hiding behind a curtain of hair...Violet from The Incredibles?

And we had lots of good treats.

Mark noticed a new addition to our Christmas bears that Adam had surreptitiously added at some point.

We love her but I'm not sure we've settled on a name.  We usually discuss for a few days.

Hyvää Pikkujoulua!!

O Christmas Tree(s)

First there's the living room tree.  Adam says I won't let anyone touch it except me.

This is not strictly true.  Often we all decorate it together.  I do, however, have exacting ideas about what goes on it.

It must be lovely and red or white or straw.

I am more open minded about the family room tree.  It is a clamor of ornaments old and new.  There is an abundance of red on it because I love red but otherwise it is a happy mixture of Christmases past.

As you can see though, we take it seriously.

Adam said that's a very genuine expression on my face which is sad because it's not all that flattering.  I am puzzling intently on which ornaments should go on next.  I orchestrate the ornaments in waves so everything of the same type doesn't end up at Braeden's eye level.  (Braeden's quick on the ornament placement but suffers from aesthetic myopia.)

On the other hand, the bigger Braeden gets, the more that grocery bill is paying off.  Adam reveled in how easy it was to put up the tree this year with his help.

Emma shares my insistence that everything looks just right.

It's nice to have her.

Mark likes to get under the chassis and decorate from a different angle.

(You can see why Emma's help is key.)

As for Adam, he takes pictures.  I hinted (you know, sweetly) that maybe things would move along faster with his help.

So then he got a little impudent.

He also told me I'd be glad to have pictures.

And he's right.  I am.





post script:  last night (for Pikku Joulu--more on that tomorrow) Adam gave me my new favorite ornament:

I had a dollhouse exactly like it when I was growing up.  I think besides my bald doll, Nellie (she shouldn't have had her hair washed by me), it was my favorite toy. 

I got all excited when I saw the ornament at Hallmark and Adam went back later and bought it.

He knows how to make me happy.

Fudge

I love my mom's fudge with all my heart.  It's the best fudge the world over.  Maybe fudge is like stuffing and potato salad, you like best what you grew up with.  I don't know.  But I do know that this fudge is my soul food.

  

I make it early in December (without the nuts because my children don't like nuts...what is wrong with those people?) and keep it in the refrigerator and cut dainty little squares whenever I want.  Which is often.  It lasts until New Year's.  

The heart wants what the heart wants.

This year, I decided to make some variations on the recipe.

I added crushed candy canes to some:

Pistachios and dried cranberries to some:

Topped some fudge with sea salt:

And mixed in some peanut butter chips to other fudge:

Of course, I also left some smooth and unadorned:

Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.

Mae West

Curls

When Mark was a toddler and had looping red curls (sigh...gone, but not forgotten), people used to ask me two dumb questions.

First dumb question:

Where did he get that curly hair?

Which is, of course, a mystery.

We are involved in genetic research to figure out how on earth he could have ended up with curly hair.

Second dumb question:

Do you curl his hair?

Obviously.  You know how toddlers are.  They don't mind sitting still to have their hair curled.  And I have lots of extra time on my hands for things like curling my toddler's hair.

(Pardon me while I regain my composure after seeing these pictures of my baby.)

Mark's hair has been short lately but it's growing a bit and starting to curl in fascinating ways.  For example, Cub Scouts produced a unique and exciting look for him:

The Ducktail

His fashionable scout hat flattened it all down and the collar of his scout shirt curled up the end.

Last night I took my boys to get their hair cut.  It was time.  Well past time.  Braeden, without the voluminous mop on his head, is now 2 inches shorter. And as evidenced by the picture above, Mark's hair was doing strange, strange things.

They look handsome now and I promised Titi, the wonderful woman who cuts their hair, that I'll never cut it again.  (I keep promising that...I keep breaking my promise...I keep regretting that I broke the promise.  It's a vicious cycle.)

Yes, we DID watch Napoleon Dynamite recently...why do you ask?