And just like that...

… Christmas has come and gone, yet again.  I must say, December was a crazy whirlwind, start to finish. I have one more rather epic post for you, and then the Friday posts will be *slightly* less jam-packed.  This is especially true for next week, as I won't even be here to document most of it - tomorrow I'm heading Halifax for a new Year's Eve wedding!

But first, let me wrap up the work of the solstice fairies, and give you at least a little glimpse of our Christmas festivities.

December 20: (Friday)(Solstice Eve):
Today we found our tree!  We went to a big garden centre near Mashpee, called Mahoney's.  They not only had lots of trees to choose from (from little $15 ones to really big, beautiful $70 ones), thy also rather inexplicably had some goats, sheep and a llama to look at.  We let Juniper choose the tree all by herself, and she found the perfect little Charlie Brown tree that was the right price, and the right size for our little house.  Since we were already near Mashpee, we then decided to go to a lovely little Thai restaurant for lunch, and then after naps, we decorated the tree.  All in all, a very busy solstice eve!

Surveying the trees

Juniper was head decorator this year...

… but Linden also had his first go at hanging ornaments

We also got the stockings out, which Linden decided should literally be worn on his feet. They were such a hit, they didn't actually get hung until Christmas Eve!

December 21 (Saturday) (Solstice!):
Naturally, today was a big day. The fairies left a note explaining that this was the last day they would be coming, as they needed to go home for a rest, but that Clark and I would fill in the last three days before Christmas.  They also left a solstice book, and suggested one last activity: making and constructing the gingerbread house.

The solstice book

Rolling the dough and cutting the template

Santa came to the Woods Hole Aquarium today, so of course we had to go.  This is the first time we've taken a "on Santa's lap" shot...

December 22 (Sunday):

As it was now up to Clark and I to fill the rest of the Calendar.  We started with the obvious - the final step in the gingerbread house: decorating it!  This is, of course, the best part of the whole process, and I must say it turned out beautifully. I think my favourite part was Juniper's suggestion to use little graham bears to decorate the yard - they were the perfect size, and made the whole thing come alive.

Hard at work.  Notice the icing on Linden's face? He somehow got icing on his hands every time he put a candy on, and therefore had to lick it off every. single. time.

The finished product!

Close-up: log pile, tree, bears playing ball and ice skating

Welcome!  Come on in through our fabulous gate in the fence!

December 23 (Monday):

Today we did something that the fairies had been meaning to try and get their act together to suggest weeks ago, but Clark and I finally organized ourselves.  The activity of the day was to go somewhere of Juniper's choice, to buy some food and a toys for those who didn't have much this Christmas.  Rather than choosing a local grocery store, Juniper decided we needed to go all the way to Hyanis, and shop at Trader Joe's.  So the activity became more of an adventure than we anticipated, but I'm glad we did it.  We let Juniper do the shopping, and the only difficult part was her coming to grips with why she couldn't also get the tea set that she had picked out.  But really, she was very good about it.

The local food bank was actually closed when we went to drop everything off, but we at least found a toy drop for the tea set.

 December 24 (Tuesday) (Christmas Eve!):
Holy moly.  The big finale. This was one jam-packed day. We left one more book: The Polar Express.  This was a big hit, and got read multiple times throughout the day.  Also, upon Juniper's request, we went on a lovely hike through Bebee woods, with the express purpose of trying to find fairies.  Let me tell you, hiking is a whole different experience when you are specifically on the lookout for all things fairy. We found loads of fairy holes in the trees, and there was much speculation on the uses of various forest items: acorn lids were fairy hats, old man's beard was bedding, leaves had multiple purposes (including boats to cross ponds), fallen logs were dance halls… truly, it was a magical experience.  We didn't actually find any fairies, but i think we'll make it a regular adventure. THEN, after naps, we had to make and decorate gingerbread cookies for Santa.

Reading the Polar Express

Juniper examining a particularly great fairy hole.

"Sally" and "Cookie",  making dough and icing (it's not enough just to bake, we also need to assume different characters, and play "restaurant" while we cook)

Decorating cookies for Santa

Family shot by the Christmas tree!

The kids also opened their one Christmas Eve traditional present - always new PJ's. This year I was ambitious, and decided to make them. There were some mis-steps I was using a vaguely-worded pattern that called for things I had ever done before, like piping and a fancy collar), but I was actually super duper pleased with the results.

Juniper opening her pj's...

… and Linden opening his…

...And Juniper modelling hers right away.  There were also matching pants, but it was the nightie I was so proud of.  Juniper actually said, completely unpromted, "oh, mom - thank you for the lovely pyjamas. They are extra special because you made them".  i'm not even kidding. 

The Christmas Tree and the stockings and all the presents before the craziness of Christmas morning

December 25 (Wednesday) (CHRISTMAS!)

Whoa. Christmas.  What can I say?  It was an emotional day. No one slept much the night before (due to a combo of colds and excitement), and there were a lot of extreme moods - SO HAPPY AND EXCITED!  HOLY CRAP TANTRUMS!  (At one point, Juniper wiped away some tears and said "Sorry.  I was just kidding.  I'm going to improve my attitude now"). But we made it through, and it was mostly pretty fun.  I had worked very hard in the weeks leading up to Christmas to construct a whole lot of wrapping bags… I decided that instead of buying wrapping paper every year, we would start a tradition wherein we wrap our presents in holiday bags.  This will save time, money and resources as the years go by, but it was  WHOLE lot of work this first time around.  I personally think they are lovely to look at as well.

Presents wrapped in bags

Special Christmas breakfast

Clark's gift from Juniper - she chose it out, and actually kept it secret until Christmas morning.  She was SO excited to give it to him.

Juniper got this crayon apron from her grandma and grandpa.  She used it to play "waitress" all morning. 'What would you like today?"

Santa left a Checkers/Chess/Backgammon game for the family.  This is Clark teaching Juniper to play checkers.  She loves it.

Linden works on his "computer".  This is actually the box for his tool kit, but it quickly transformed.

And there you have it, folks!  Happy Solstice!  Merry Christmas!  And an almost happy new year!  I will keep my now faithful Friday posts, but they won't be nearly as comprehensive, I warrant.  But please do keep checking back.  I love to know that people are reading and enjoying this as much as I am.  I do have video footage from Christmas, and if I get my act together, I may post that next week.  Stay tuned! Hey… because I'm going to be gone for most of the week, I may try to convince Clark to do a guest post.  We'll see.  I'm sure he'll have his hands full without me.  I'll leave you with a picture from this morning - Linden after Juniper got her hands on him.  See you next week!

In a fancy dress, and covered in Christmas band-aids. 

Solstice Fairies: Week 3

Linden tries on some dress-up glasses at our wonderful Sunday night dinner at the Leveques'

My goodness!  The solstice countdown is drawing to a close - today is, after all, solstice eve. Big things are afoot. There will be much to report next week, I am sure.  This week, however, on top of documenting the solstice fairy shenanigans (with, unfortunately, some not-so-great-quality photos), I have some other very special treats.  Enjoy!

December 13 (Friday): Today was a double header - it began with a morning playdate at Helen's house, and ended with a movie night.  Much fun was had at Helen's, complete with a good old-fashioned romp in the snow before we left.  I got loads of great pictures. Upon returning home, however, I found that I had neglected to put the sd card back in the camera, and therefore had actually recorded nothing. Domage! I do however, have an action-packed shot of movie night, taken mid-movie.  We opted for "Muppets Christmas", and I can honestly say I think all four of us enjoyed it immensely!

Nothing says "movie night" like popcorn, pjs and some knitting. I think that's Kermit in the reflection...

December 14 (Saturday): Today the fairies suggested we take a day-trip to Hyannis to take a ride on the carousel. This also meant braving the mall, and attempting quick pop-ins at places you can't go here, such as Trader Joe's, Joanne's, and the Cape Cod Beer Company. It was ambitious, and involved *some* frustration.  But at least there were, as promised, a number of much ballyhooed rides on the carousel. 

Mrs. style maven

Mr. Dapper.  Can't go wrong with a sweater vest.

December 15 (Sunday): Anticipating that we might all be a little worn out from our day trip, the fairies kindly left a book today, rather than planning an ambitious activity. It is a classic, and seemed very appropriate for the solstice season:

December 16 (Monday): This morning started off straggly, as Juniper woke up at 4am, and threw up twice.  I assumed it was going to be a rough day, and that the solstice activity would just have to be skipped or postponed. When she woke up again at 8am, however, she was right as rain, ate a huge breakfast, and was completely fine for the rest of the day. This was particularly great, as today's solstice activity turned out to be a huge hit.  The fairies suggest that Juniper create a book (perhaps holiday-themed), and include both story and illustrations.  This was a spin-off on oral story-creating that Juniper and I do all the time - I was reminded of it when Lauren showed me a book that her son Noah had made when we were there for dinner the night before.  Anyway, Juniper LOVED it.  She did all the illustrations first, and then decided which order to put them in, and then dictated the story to me as we went through it page by page:

The very first pages

Due to Juniper's chosen medium (watercolour), everything had to dry before it was assembled.  It turned into a full-day project.

Anyway, the result was so awesome that I decided that I should really include it in full here!  This is "special treat" #1.  Without further ado, I bring you Solstice Calendar in the House, written and illustrated by Juniper Richards, transcribed verbatim by me. All rights reserved.

(as best as I can tell, this is some abstract art for the title page)

Once upon a time, there was a lady chasing a gingerbread man

So, they saw a lot of smiles, and they wondered what they were. Then, they saw some balls.  Spooky balls.

Then they saw a forest. The forest was dark, and they saw spooky snowballs.  They saw big trees that had spooky eyes. They screamed and ran right home.

Then they saw logs.  Then they ran right home, because they were actually dinosaurs, not logs.  They knew this because suddenly they heard a ROAR. The dinosaurs ran after them.

They found an igloo, and they hid inside. The dinosaurs didn't see them. So the dinosaurs went home sad, because they had wanted to eat them, but now they couldn't. They threw up a lot because they were sweaty, sweaty, sweaty, sweaty, sweaty, and then they got cold and sick.

Then the lady and the gingerbread man saw a whale. They noticed they were in the middle of the ocean. And then a shark came and attacked them.  And then they ran straight home.

Then, they saw a fairy in the solstice calendar.  She was beautiful - all different colours. She said, "why, I've been looking for you!"  Then she flew away into the woods with them, and they lived together forever and for always.

There was a pond near where they lived, and one day they saw an alligator. It was scary, and ran after them fiercely. But then the alligator said, "why did you run away from me? I'm a friendly alligator!" "Ohhhhhhh!", they all said.  They became friends.

They were happy and they lived with the alligator.  Actually, it was a blue crocodile. THE END.

So, wasn't that amazing?  I hope she maintains the enthusiasm she currently has for it (and the great pride that she clearly felt in the finished product). It reminds me of how much I loved doing the same thing as a kid. 

Now, you may think that was already a lot to cram into a quasi-sick-day (I decided to not leave the house all day just to play it safe), but that was not all that transpired.  You see, I had just received a pair of hair cutting shears in the mail that I had ordered from Amazon, and was keen to try my hand at Linden's crazy mop.

The happy test subject.  Little did he know what was coming.

I semi-successfully gave Juniper a trim.  It was easy enough, really, and though I am now seeing lots of little uneven bits, on the whole you would never notice.  Linden, however, was a different story.  I mostly wanted to get rid of the crazy mess at the back of his head, and I thought I'd try shaping it.  Bad idea.  Oh well, if his hair grows as fast as mine (which it really seems to), then hopefully this ragged weirdly-sheared semi-bowl cut will be a thing of the past soon enough.  I may let Clark try his hand at it next time.

Clark tried to "fix" it afterwards, but not much could be done at this point.

 December 17 (Tuesday): Every year, we make a gingerbread house, but it has to be done in stages. The first stage is both simple and fun - picking out the candy to decorate it!  Linden and I picked Juniper up from preschool at noon, and headed to the local candy shop (it is one of the only times of year we actually go in, so it is a pretty big treat). As I was doing this alone, however, I decided that for everyone's sanity, I would strap Linden to my back and keep him there. He was incredibly displeased with this turn of events ("Take mittens off!" "See candy!" "Touch candy!" "I NEED GET DOWN!"), but the loud protestations were better than the alternative.

Like a kid in a candy shop...

December 18 (Wednesday): The fairies suggested it was high time that Juniper started making some Christmas/Solstice gifts. This was very good timing, as we needed to whip up a gift to bring in to Juniper's teachers the next day. Luckily, I had thought ahead, and had all the supplies ready for a huge batch of my current favourite granola (including some lovely glass jars to put it in). Juniper certainly helped, but as you might notice from the picture, she was also very busy dancing that evening. (The day previously, a "ballerina" came to Juniper's preschool, and taught the kids some moves from the nutcracker.  Juniper has been donning this dance suit and tutu every day since then).

Granola! 

December 19 (Thursday): Today we went out for dinner.  We actually hadn't been out to eat in quite awhile, so the fairies were correct in assuming that this would be a popular solstice treat. They had also assumed, perhaps, that the kids would be happy to go wherever we suggested.  Oh, those silly, naïve fairies. Juniper's eyes lit up as soon as she read the note, and exclaimed, "I want to go to Friendly's!!!" Oh, Friendly's.  For those who have not been, it is a very popular restaurant chain in the States, which serves food that can only be touted as *slightly* better than MacDonalds.  The draw, however, is their ice-cream. They have many, many flavours of ice-cream, and it is included as a central component of all kids meals. Also, the kid's menu (including food, beverages and desserts) has pictures on it, so the kids can peruse it and make choices for themselves.  Really, Friendly's is a kids's dream, and my idea of food hell. Anyway, we hadn't been to Friendly's in a VERY long time (over half a year, at least), due in large part to the many months that we had Juniper on a dairy-free diet following her awful stomach troubles in the summer. I had hoped that she had forgotten about it, but she had clearly just been waiting, oh so patiently, for the first chance she could as soon as dairy was re-introduced.  How could we say no?

About to embark on a culinary adventure

Perusing the menu

Linden was pleased with the choice of establishment.

And today?  Why, it is solstice eve! A very important day to be sure.  It will include, among other things, the choosing and procuring of a tree.  Details on that (and all the other wonderful things that will undoubtedly occur in this most magical of weeks), to come next Friday.  Until then, I leave you with treat #2: a few little videos.

Video #1: Linden has a rough morning.

So, yesterday morning was rough.  For whatever reason, Linden (usually a champion sleeper), had been up multiple times during the night, and then was up for good at like 5:30am.  He was exhausted.  I was exhausted. I was, I'm sure, more than a little cranky.  Linden, however, was completely out of his gourd. For some unknown reason, Clark thought it would be a good idea to let Linden watch a video while I was getting dressed, and he was trying to get Juniper out the door. This was all fine and good, until I (who had nothing, may I remind you, to do with giving him this video in the first place), told him it was time to turn the video off.  What resulted was the most epic, crazy tantrum I have ever witnessed in my entire life.  It went on for so long, and in so many different rooms and poses and manifestations that I eventually stopped trying to comfort or divert or distract or make him him laugh, or reason with him (all of which were making him angrier).  Instead, I opted to develop a sense of humour about it until the fuse burned out. The fairy wings he was sporting helped in this regard :) I also decided to snap a couple of video clips from it, and strung them together.  You'll be happy to know that he eventually snapped out of it when I suggested we play "boats"(the first suggestion that he accepted), and that after a long, long nap, he was back to himself that evening (I think all that ice-cream at Friendly's helped).

Video #2: Juniper the "ballerina":

As I mentioned earlier in the post, the kids had a ballet dancer visit their pre-school earlier in the week.  Juniper was clearly quite taken with her, as she has been donning her dance leotard and tutu every chance she gets since then. Her choice of music and moves might be slightly atypical in the world of ballet, but I can assure you that she fancies herself a ballerina in the making! Clearly we need to get her into a class of some sort to help fuel her enthusiasm...

Video #3: Some miscellaneous musical moments from the last month or so: