Happy St Pat's Day!

I've never really bothered to learn much about it, so I have always been a bit confused by this whole "luck of the Irish" thing. A casual glance at their history makes me think it might have started ironically, but then went viral. Still, we've been very lucky so far today! The morning clouds cleared right out, and the sun is shining brightly and the air is unseasonably warm. It's treat day here, so we all walked to the Farmer's Market and indulged in some treats from one of our favorite bakers. Going home, we took long way around via the community garden. Jeremiah, Sarah and I all found 4-leaf clovers! I gave Kate mine, and she threaded it through the button hole of her overalls - now she's wearing some green.

I know it's been awhile since I've posted. The girls have been up to their usual - vacillating wildly between uber-sweet and monstrous. The other day, while Sarah was taking a bath, Kate went in and dumped cups of very cold water on her. They got water all over the bathroom. I considered breaking it up, but when I realized I'd be squelching what will certainly become a fond childhood memory for them both, I took a couple pictures instead. The bathroom is built to withstand a lot of water in places, anyway.

Now I must conduct a Reiki session, then get out into my garden, which is sorely in need of some compost and mulch. Also, the kids have gotten deadly quiet downstairs. Time to sign off here and carefully proceed down to undo whatever disaster is surely in the very quiet making.

I Dropped the Ball Before the Ball Dropped

Yeah, I know, I was going to keep track of the kids' winter break here and I didn't. So sue me. Here's a couple fun photos from Christmas morning, though! We had a wonderful Christmas. It's always fun to have far-away family visit, and we encourage all of you to do just that - as often as you possibly can. That having been said, Christmas with just the 4 of us was mindblowingly nice. We were up at 6ish, well before the sun, and then it turned out that the sun wasn't planning to get up at all. It rained and rained and rained all day. We reveled in it! Sarah asked if we could wear our pajamas all day and we enthusiastically declared that we most certainly could and then went right ahead and did exactly that.

Santa brought each girl a My Twinn doll, and they fit into the household right away, especially that day, because we were all lounging about, only bending our arms and legs when someone positioned them for us. It was, as expected, really fun to watch them open those gifts. Big smiles! Kate changed the name of her doll at least 4 times in the first 2 days. I think she's currently named Chloe. Sarah named hers Sophia. We did not photograph the girls opening all the wonderful gifts everyone sent to them, but know this - they loved the goods. They were sugared up and from the word go, when they pounced on their stockings, which contained plenty of crappy chocolate, and ate most of their contents before Jeremiah and I had filled our coffee cups the first time. After that, it was a lovefest for every item they opened. So, if you sent them something this holiday season, I can assure you they said "I love it!" with house-shaking gusto upon unwrapping it.Christmas dinner was cooked in the crockpot. We spent the day chatting with loved ones via phone, eating everything in sight, and reading all our new books. Writing about it now, I'm wishing I could have that day again. Ah, yes, good stuff. The pets had a nice day, too, because there was a lot of lap-sitting opportunities for them throughout the day. I hope everyone's Christmas was at least as relaxing and snuggly.

Winter Break Adventures, Thus Far

We've been very busy this week. There's been baking, shopping, walking around, playing at the park, ice skating, fist fighting, gift-giving, more baking and lots and lots of rain. Somehow I failed to capture our Winter Solstice celebration in photographs of any kind this year. It was lovely, though that day was very rainy, too. Here are some photos of other highlights from our week, for your viewing pleasure.
First, we baked for our neighbors, Steve and Joy and the mailman. The girls especially enjoyed making Oreos, but deserted me while I was making the sugared cranberries.










After all the baking we needed to get outdoors. It was my intention to make them walk into downtown Decatur (their exhaustion being my key goal) but we only got as far as McKoy Park, which is about 1/10 the distance. They then whined the entire, oh, I don't know, maybe half a mile, to Aunt Jo Jo's, then Aunt Jo Jo took them to Target. It's the hard knock life for them.











Then came the rain. We lasted all day Tuesday without much complaint, but when it hadn't even let up on Wednesday, we had some issues. I cheerfully forced them to make homemade puff paint with me. It turns out the fun of making homemade puff paint is in the making, not so much in the painting. Then, concerned that their little bodies had been mostly inert for nearly 2 days, I convinced them to play hide and seek, and was sure to add that the seeker must tag the hider upon finding her, before she can make it to base. This went well for a bit, but ultimately led to a knock-down fight. I was surprised. I opted to photograph the event rather than intervene and, happily, it worked itself out. Then we had homemade hot cocoa and marshmallows (yes, I made marshmallows too. It's fun!) and read Christmas stories by the Solstice tree.


I just thought this was cute.

















When Aunt Jo Jo took the girls to Target, they got packets of facial masques from the $1 bins. So, we had to have a spa afternoon. Sarah went for the traditional green mud while Kate opted for the cucumber peel-off masque. She liked how gross the peeling off part looked.



On the Solstice, while the sky continued to weep and the temperature felt nothing like winter, we headed to the Rink at Park Tavern, where we met up with my friend Laura, who'd trekked to these parts with her family all the way from Paris, France, for a bit of ice skating and (more) hot chocolate. Laura's oldest, Irene, is Kate's age. Of course, all they really know about each other is that their moms are friends, but Kate and Irene skated together for nearly the full 2-hour session. Sarah, who started the session so terrified of skating she wouldn't let go of the wall and started to panic when she realized she's inched her way an uncomfortable distance away from the rink's exit, finished the day by dismissing me as her partner (a wise choice, really) and was merrily skating around in circles, not even touching the wall, by the time we had to turn in our skates. The whole thing wore the girls out so completely, they insisted on being carried to the car. Smashing success, and it's always a delight to see Laura and her peeps.

At long last, Christmas is upon us! It's Christmas Eve and since I knew what Aunt Jude and Uncle Kevin sent the girls, I allowed them to open that gift today. Now, they are the proud owners of a cookie decorating kit, food coloring and a book of fun cupcake (for later) ideas. We commenced ta' decoratin'. The kids consumed SO much sugar, I made them take a walk around the neighborhood with me immediately after the mayhem. They look kind of calm in these photos. They were not calm. They have not been calm all day. Who can blame them? We've been watching Santa's progress (thank-you Google Earth!) and he'll be here very soon. I can't wait! Now, I must wrap this up, because we have to eat dinner, so we can get on to sipping eggnog by the fireplace and reading Christmas stories, per Sarah's request.

The Goose is Getting Fat (I MIGHT be the Goose...)

Apparently the best way to become unbelievably busy is to take a full month off from working. My days still begin around 5AM, and I haven't even taken a single nap. I really thought there would be some napping. So, all the house de-cluttering, Christmas-preparing, new website content researching and general errand-running have kept me from updating the blog. I shall attempt to catch you up on the the exciting lives of Kate and Sarah. Today, we will go waaaaaaay back to two days after Thanksgiving, when we took a scenic train ride on the Blue Ridge Scenic Railway's Santa Train.




Grandma Provost contracted a rhino virus just before we were scheduled to head to the train, so she stayed home an knitted (like a proper grandmother) while we headed to the north Georgia mountains to meet the Grinch, Santa, Mrs. Claus, Rudolph, Frosty and some elves. I highly recommend this sort of thing to anyone with wee children. Dare I use the word "enchanting"? I dare. We sang carols and Santa paid a visit to each child, instead of all the kids having to wait in a longass line. The elves passed out jingle bells and candy canes and there was much drinking of hot cocoa.



After the train ride, we headed into downtown Blue Ridge for some grub. It's a cute little town center; the place was jam packed with revelers. We thought the kids would we tired enough to pass out during the long drive home, but sometimes you just don't get lucky.

Catty Girls

This was Halloween! As has become tradition for us, mad props to Aunt Jo Jo for the costumes! Not pictured are the black press-on nails she also supplied.

Another Reason to Throw Down

Sarah wrote that note herself. She's getting pretty good at sounding out her words, plus, a few of those are sight words. I don't know why she stuck it to her face. I don't know what came over me, but the girls asked if they could have a Halloween party this year, and I said yes. I immediately began thinking of Halloween-themed foods I could serve. It's always about food. So anyway, today we partied. The girls helped me a bit. Sarah even vacuumed. Kate refused. I made scary ghosts (which also sort of looked like Klansman, but those are scary too, so I was alright with that), spiders (not shown for some reason), a pumpkin-shaped cheese ball, monster cupcakes, and mummified hotdogs, which are also not pictured, which makes me sad, because they were really cute. Jeremiah made chili for the grown-ups. Joy made guacamole because before they left town for the weekend, Brendan gave her 9 avocados. See that green icing on the monster cupcake? Made with avocados.

The kids painted their own coffins, enjoyed temporary vampire fangs, ate a lot of sugar, and bobbed for apples. There were only a few kids here, but they made an amazing mess, and a surprising amount of noise - so I consider the evening a huge success! We couldn't forget the camera, since we were at home, but did forget about the camera a lot, so this is only partially documented. We're missing entire people here. Still, you get the idea...








No one was instructed to give me the thumbs up, but I guess everyone really wanted the camera to know all was well.