Valentines...it's the new Halloween

Who knew. Being members now of our local homeschooling group we have greatly enjoyed participating in the party rites of passage. First the Halloween party, then the holiday party, and now the Valentines party. I spent about a week planning different cards we could make by hand until, with several other things going on, I was forced to admit that we are free-time challenged. So yesterday we went shopping for cards, but that just served to make me lament our lack of crafting time even more. Calvin didn't really want to give cards with message like "you've been running through my mind" or "you make my heart go crazy", so we bought the simplest of the cards, which happened to be Disney's traditional characters saying things like "you're on the the right track, valentine" or a simple "happy Valentines Day".

And then, just like birthdays with their newly overflowing favor bags, Valentines Day is no longer about class cupcakes and simple cards, it's about the favors attached to said cards. I'm blown away, and that makes me feel old. Calvin opted for cute little heart erasers in Valentines colors, which I attached to the cards with a dab of hot glue. And with the ordeal of preparation over (not so much an ordeal since he loved every minute of it), we joined our group for an afternoon of cookie decorating, bingo playing, and card exchanging. We renewed our Halloween candy offer and even after keeping two pieces Calvin made $5 selling the rest to us.

It was fun.

Up north for new years, 2012

We always head to northern lower Michigan to celebrate a late Christmas and an on-time New Years with my Godmother. It's a trip we look forward to immensely for the silliness, serenity, and snow. Weather is weird this year, and we thought we were out of luck on that last bullet point, but nature delivered just as we were looking to head home, and we got an extra day out of that timing. As for the other two wish list items—silliness is no problem, but serenity is always at an arm's length with a five-year-old. Still, two out of three isn't bad.

More Christmas? Such a lucky boy. Look at those wonderful penguins.

Blue (the dog, not the Christmas)

Sleepy-heads

A cherry-berry pie from Jesperson's in Petoskey, photo taken five—literally five—minutes after we got home with it, still warm from their heavenly ovens.

The bushes were masquerading as dog/bear/snow/burlap people so Jack Frost (and possibly the deer) wouldn't recognize them. I was thoroughly fooled.

Jon and I got some of that serenity we were looking for by heading out the store for some last-minute necessities on New Year's Eve. To extend it a bit we walked, and we also added a few things to list of "necessities" that took us not only to the grocery store, but also into our favorite quaint little town, Harbor Springs. Whose to say that we wouldn't find "necessities" at their little book store?

Bot Bie is a family food tradition. It fits the definition of comfort food to tee—warm, filling, and not so very good for you.

You'd think he'd done all the cooking...

Last nap of 2011.

And finally the snow has arrived.

This is what a chickadee looks like head-on. He makes me giggle.

The bear/dog/snow/burlap people say "Happy New Year!"

And now we're home, the blog is "caught up", Michigan has won the Sugar Bowl (in a not-so-pretty game), and 2012 can get underway.

1 day: Christmas Eve at Kerrytown

It's a tradition, something I've done with my family since I was a young girl, a tradition that we have continued together year after year after year. A brunch of seafood chowder from Monahan's, and bee-bim bop from Kosmo. Shopping and browsing and giggling and taking pictures.

No matter how cold it is, this is the warmest time of year.

Holiday Nights

It was the weekend of our annual Christmas outing with our good friends. Calvin spent Saturday night with his grandparents while we enjoyed cheese, fruit, wine, scallops, an evening of festivities at historical Greenfield Village, and, finally, more fruit, cheese, wine, and dessert.

This evening is magical very year for us. It was frigid this time around, temperatures dipping to near twenty with a brisk wind, but the sky was clear and the moon was full. We all have a great time together with good food and lots of laughs, and there is something very beautiful about Victorian Christmas traditions, or really anything Christmas and historical. And making creme brulee together was a lot of fun.

Calvin also had a great night, and has yet to stop talking about the shaped pancakes his grampa made for him this morning (including a liopleurodon, apparently—we'll never be able to top that).

holiday shenanigans

I've had to take a couple of days away from the computer to enter into the magic of old-world holiday life—a Christmas celebration in our little downtown on Saturday, and tonight our annual Saint Nicholas party. These things always fall on the same weekend, along with the Messiah performance, which I'd love to see sometime, and Christmas at the historic farm in Waterloo, which we'd also like to see sometime. But we had a great time in town yesterday, and a wonderful, warm evening with family tonight, and thankfully tomorrow is just a normal day, followed by a couple of normal weeks, when we can maybe take a break from all the holiday shenanigans and do things like laundry, and reading, and Legos, and...