Two Plus a Handful

After Thanksgiving...

I had a rough day, went to have some time to breathe in the cemetery, came home to this. I've never had Christmas lights on my *own* house before, my kids have never had a "Christmas house" before. This was a nice way to come home. Shad put up these lights, got all the kids to help clean up the house, and listed my keyboard on Craigslist and had a seller come over right after I got home.

And since our house was decorated on the outside, we needed to decorate it on the inside.

When your five-year-old proudly shows you how she can cut her own waffle, asks for a picture, and then right after the picture, the plate slides off the counter onto the floor. Hooray, maple syrup!

Katie is always saving empty Amazon boxes, cereal boxes, egg cartons, milk cartons, everything, and creating things with it. I don't remember if this was a car or an airplane.

{Katie & Samson}

Off to the library! It was an ERC day.

Shad surprised me with a date at home because he couldn't find a babysitter. He brought home Thai curry for us and Little Caesars for the kids to eat in the playroom while watching a movie. It was so nice to eat a quiet dinner at home and brainstorm our world bucket list...which is pretty much anywhere and everywhere and not really a bucket list, but a guideline list.

And then he decided to pose around on the stairs for me.

My sister Lori kinda spontaneously decided to move to Florida (okay, she'd been planning to go in January, but then winter hit and her skin freaked out and she made arrangements to get out). So I went up to Denver so my kids could spend time with her before she left and so I could help her pack. Which looked like this:

Bag after bag after bag of sweaters, skirts, camis, hoodies, leggings...I swear, I packed and vacuumed at least 10 Jumbo & Large bags of clothes. I can't access the original text I sent to Shad telling him my overwhelm.

See. Clothes are her thing. Not mine.

And after helping her pack all of this (and this is after she got rid of several trash bags of clothes to the thrift store) and her 100 pairs of shoes (that is the actual count), I went home and continued to purge my already purged wardrobe because it still just felt like too much.

And then my mom's neighbor came over to hang out with my girls and my heart stopped. She looks exactly how I remember Justine Sullivan from 6th grade. Justine agrees. So trippy.

One Sunday morning, Scarlet got to play outside in her first snow...

While I sat inside practicing hygge and gemutlichkeit by drinking Egyptian licorice tea in my favorite mug from my dear friend Mallory, reading Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman, listening to Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata on loop as suggested by Lightman in the first chapter, cuddling under a fluffy blanket, wearing my timeturner necklace that reminds me I can be powerful like Hermione, and blissfully watching the lazy snowflakes drift down from the sky out the window beside me. Ahhhhh, hygge!

(Side note: I quit going to church in October because, well, sometimes you just stop forcing yourself to do something you don't want to do because deep down inside it just feels wrong and you've struggled with it for 15 years. And I've enjoyed my Sundays ever since.)

[Second side note: You can read about hygge, gemutlichkeit, and 5 other beautiful cultural practices from other countries here. This article has changed my life.]

See Samson down there on the bottom right? He loves being Wonder Woman when we all play Mortal Kombat vs. DC together.

I don't like taking the kids to the forest in the winter when it's cold and they whine at me after we spend 30 minutes getting ready, 20 minutes driving, and 5 minutes playing. So it was nice to be able to continue enjoying our forest exploring (or forest bathing for me, which is also mentioned in the article linked above!) so deep into November.

And I've been trying to take more pictures of nature while I'm out in it as a way of practicing friluftsliv from the article linked above. This way I'm interacting with the natural environment more than just sitting making sure Samson doesn't fall off the bridge (once in July was more than enough).

Samson has been getting more and more interactive with other kids, grabbing sticks to use as swords and run around having battles.

Colorado Springs people are hardy and vigorous people. I've tried to explain it to friends before how it's not enough for them to be a runner or a cyclist, but you've gotta do it going up a mountain at a 45 grade. So when I'm walking up to the Manitou Incline behind this guy who looks like he's in his 70's and fit and lean as can be, pulling out his shoe tracks, no water with him, you know he's just here for his light morning workout.

Fog. Those thick foggy days when you can't greet your mountain in the morning but you love it anyway.

Followed by a snow!

(I'm still in love with this window view. All the time. Every morning.)

Samson loves cooking! He always wants to be Little Chef with the big chef like in Ratatouille.

Shad was the big chef for breakfast that day.

When the little two sass Mom and then taunt her to come find them.

Icy Sunday morning! I love icy mornings with all the white, blue, and gray.

Humans!

(Ofrenda ancestors still up on the wall from Day of the Dead weeks ago. That's how holiday decorating goes for me.)

The day before Thanksgiving I watched my friend Leah's four kids for her to get a day off. The kids entertained themselves while I enjoyed loads of piano time. At one point, things just seemed to get really crazy and it wasn't until later that I realized I had given them sugar in their tea during our Poetry & Tea time. I always love being able to understand things!

Miss Sassy Pants down there explained to me why she was going to be a knight next Halloween.

My instructions were that this little one needed to be rocked to sleep but then could be transferred to a bed. Naaaaaah, I have to have some quiet time shut away rocking a cuddling a little human? I'll just keep her and not mind a bit.

Those freshly awake faces that little people have!

And then...Thanksgiving morning when I came down the stairs and found out that Samson had already tested the pumpkin pie. Those aren't surface scrapes, either. He dug his finger down to the crust!

And then we forested because it was Thursday! What a wonderful way to start Thanksgiving!

Sam and his bazooka.

Shad's parents, sister Ruth and husband Coltyn, and Ruth's friend came down for Thanksgiving. Everyone brought food and didn't want to take any home with them, so we ended up with more food than we started with. That was a lot of eating for a week...

We ended the night with couch cuddles.