Spring is finally here!

 

A late Christmas post

 Little Brother was overjoyed Christmas morning when he saw that good St. Nick had left him a train! It is a beautiful train, with a red engine, three cars, and a caboose.

Once I got it all assembled and correctly wired (which took ages, as I'm not mechanically inclined), he spent hours running it around and carefully putting the cars back on the track when they fell off.

The two of us on Christmas Eve.

Snow days

I went for a walk in the snow late last night. There must have been 6 inches of it all over everything (there is more now). I stepped into the backyard, and was transfixed. I had stumbled into faerie-land. Somehow, I was on the other side of the wardrobe. As I walked through the soft glowing wood, I kept expecting a faun with a large umbrella to come trotting out from under the sleeping, woolly trees. I readied myself to help pick up the packages he would, of course, drop. I really don't think I would have been much surprised if some creature had come out to greet me. Anything can happen when the snow covers the world and the imagination wonders.

The houses twinkled their lights merrily all along the way, and the snow turned innocent front-garden plants into fearsome sea-creatures and terrible beasts. They had long, thin necks and terrifying large heads; they seemed to be popping up from the ground, their frosty horns preceding them out of the deep. One of the horrid, long, prickly arms reached out and plopped a freezing fist-full of snow into my startled face.

I came out of my happy imaginings every time I slipped spectacularly. I fancied myself a dainty, elfish maiden, tripping through the frozen forest. Actually I looked more like an abominable snowman while I trudged through the slippery slush, plunged through the drifts, and fell on the hidden ice in my red cap and nylon snow-suit, and fake uggs. But it was glorious anyhow.


This morning I took Little Brother on a quest for a good sledding hill. He was wearing his matching black snow-suit. We found a good hill, but after a half an hour of trying to pack it down hard enough for my ancient, round, red sled to glide down (without help), we gave up the idea and rolled around and threw snowballs instead. I ended up hauling him (in the sled) up and down all the rolling hills in our neighborhood. We came back flushed, happy, and very tired. I am spending the rest of my day crocheting and beading Christmas presents, eating cookies, and singing carols.  Isn't that a thoroughly satisfactory way to spend a weekend?

Snow, snow, snow, snow, SNOW!

We are expecting to be snowed in this weekend! It started snowing at 3 today (I came home from work early because of it), and there are already 4+ inches. !! It is so amazingly beautiful, I could stand in it for ages (but it's way to cold, unfortunately). Here are a couple bad and inadequate pictures that don't even begin to show the utter majesty and spectacular-ness of this snow.

                              Doesn't our house look cozy?

Someone is excited!

Putting up the Christmas tree part 1

I searched for the prettiest tree.

 

My brother scampered around and looked cute.

The tree! It's huge... It was all I could do to cut it, haul it up off the ground (so as to not mess it up), and then to hoist it into the back of the van. I got a rash from the prickles!

So we took our beautiful tree home from the junk yard. Decorations to come!

A beautiful day continued

I am sure that someone lives in this wonderful stump... I wish I was small enough to live there too!
Both the poison ivy (above) and the English ivy (below) looked quite pretty in their fall colors.

Little Brother was thoroughly enjoying the day!


We stopped to take a look at what I thought was just an abandoned and dewy spiderweb. I didn't find out until I had actually seen the picture that it was, in fact, still occupied!

A beautiful day

It was such a beautiful day today! The sky was blue, the air was crisp, and the colors were dazzling, though unfortunately the ground was damp owing to all the rain we've had. I haven't really been outside since I've been sick; I feel better, though I still have a magnificent bass cough, and get tired and out of breath after physical exertion (like fetching the mail). But I ventured out, accompanied by mom's camera and Little Brother, to breathe the fresh air and to try and capture on film some of the beauty I had seen while looking out the windows.

There were still some leftover berries on the crab apple tree; I tried to capture how pretty they looked against the sky. I didn't really, but you can sort of see it.

Halloween

Halloween was last Saturday, and since I am long past the age of trick-or-treating, I sewed the costumes for Little Brother, and got to watch him enjoy the heck out of the holiday (as I used to). He wanted to be a bat. I've never seen a bat that's black, but using his black shirt and pants and my beanie was sure easier than having to go buy brown ones. Mom and I made the wings out of wire coat hangers and the lining of an old coat. There were going to be ears, but I ran out of time.


This year was a bit different, since usually I and some of my dearest friends celebrate All Hallows Eve with a medieval or renaissance feast. Because I was sick we had to postpone it, but hopefully we will be able to do it soon.