Friday Update: Solstice Fairies, week 2

Clark and Linden found some secret bridges on an adventure one day

Happy Friday!  The solstice fairies continued to leave things this past week, so I faithfully recorded and took pictures. 

DECEMBER 7: As it was a Saturday, this day was particularly action packed.  The fairies reminded us about the Renaissance Fair going on in the Village, and let us know that this would be a good day to start making some holiday cards. Somehow, we didn't make it down to the fair last year, but it was great fun - there were tables set up with people selling their wares, a whole room devoted to beautifully constructed wreaths for sale, and a "tea room", complete with homemade lunch items, treats, flea-market items, and a kid's corner.  Though I have no pictures from the fair itself, I do have some photos of the spoils:

Linden chose this headband from the flea market table. He was obsessed with it for three days.

Juniper also scored a headband. It is actually hugely useful in keeping the hair out of her face. Unfortunately, it mysteriously disappeared after only a couple days.

The beautiful wreath we bought. I couldn't resist...

… because of the beautiful juniper berries, of course!

After naps, we hauled out the sparkly paints (is there anything better than sparkly paints?), and started in on the cards. The kids got a good start, but I feel like this will be an ongoing project.  Perhaps even after solstice and Christmas have passed.  We'll see.

Hard at work

December 8: Sunday was the Christmas parade! The fairies, however, always feel a little bad about making the treat of the day be something that they had absolutely no hand in, so they also left some beautiful new festive clothes that they likely found at a nice consignment store.

Watching one of the many marching bands. (is that me?)

Posing with their new duds. Juniper's Bolero is the only new part of this outfit, but it is red and sparkly. Linden has new pants and shirt, and could basically be twins with his dad.  Except that none of Clark's jeans are fleece lined. Sad, but true. 

December 9: A day to make some salt-dough ornaments! Somehow the fairies even knew that there would be friends coming over to help. Really, it was quite a fun morning, and we managed to make the dough, roll it out, cut out the shapes, bake them, and paint them all in one morning.

The funnest part: the painting stage. (closest-farthest: Linden, Miguel, Helen, Juniper)

Close-up: Helen and Juniper

Two sweet blond boys: Linden and Miguel

December 10: Girls night! (and boys night!)  Girls night is an ongoing tradition throughout the year, but it is a treat.  So the fairies didn't mind making that one of the solstice treats.  Besides, a girls night means, by default, that there is also a boys night, so much fun is had by all.  Girls night involves going to Starbucks (really, the only option we know of that is open at night). We buy apple juice and tea, sometimes we get a treat, and we always bring a game of some sort (and maybe also journals and books depending on our mood). This particular night, we brought along a game of memory, and spent the evening playing multiple games.

Apparently, the boys also had fun.  They played some music, sang some songs, and watched a little "Dinosaur Train" on Netflix. I asked Clark to take a picture, but he "forgot". 

Setting out the cards

Action shot. Notice the beautiful sweater?  That was another one of the clothing items that the fairies left on Sunday.

December 11: This was another big day! Not only was there some freshly fallen snow in which to play (our first of the season!), but there was also a holiday party at the Woods Hole library in the evening.  Once again, however, the fairies felt they really didn't have much to do with either of these things, so they also left a couple of pieces of chocolate.  Organic fair-trade, of course. We made the mistake, however, of making the kids wait to eat the chocolate until after supper.  This meant after the library party, which meant directly before bed.  Linden was up until almost nine, clearly drunk on sugar, singing songs loudly to himself in his crib.  Ah well.

Snow!

Clark came home at lunch to play as well. Canadians and our snow, eh?

Ahhh… finally getting to strap on the good ole' skis

Linden tries the skis for the first time!

This is the kind of raucous good time one might expect at a library party. 

Enjoying her much-anticipated chocolate. This is vintage 80s dress that Yvon had saved from when his daughter was Juniper's age!

December 11: Games night!  The fairies even left a brand new game - one that they felt could be enjoyed by all four of us.  Though it is a modern twist of some sort (involving a "Dinosaur Train" theme again - what is it with Dinosaur Train, anyway?  It is a PBS show about dinosaurs that we stumbled across one day, and I unwittingly also bought them Dinosaur Train toothbrushes, and now this game.  Is it super popular or something?  Or is it just destined to keep appearing in our lives?  I don't know the answer to that question, but I'll keep you updated if I figure it out. *Edit from Clark: It's a show about dinosaurs and trains. What more could a kid want?*).  Anyway, it is basically the exact same thing as the good old classic "Trouble", complete with the dice popper. I figured if nothing else, Linden would enjoy popping the dice when it was his turn. Result?  I think it was a good choice, and that we'll end up playing it quite a bit. This particular round of it, however, involved a whole lot of trying to keep Linden from moving all the game pieces and incessantly popping the dice. We'll work on it.

Figuring it all out

And that's it!  I think I might as well leave today's solstice treat for next week's post, because otherwise there are no pictures to go along with it. Here are a few other pictures from the week.  Have a great weekend!

We warned Linden that he shouldn't be climbing on and in things that were not meant to be used in that way. He didn't listen. Then he got stuck. We let him sweat it out for a bit.

There are some very elaborate picnics that happen at our place.

Juniper and Linden both had to tuck their babies in before we left for the library party. They were still snuggling when we got back.

Friday Update: The solstice fairies

Often when things get too quiet, I enter a room, and discover untold atrocities.  Other times, however, I find this.

December is here!(?) This means that the solstice/advent calendar that I made last year has been hung on the wall.  More than simply adding some festive decor, however, this also means that I have the nightly task of coming up with something new and inspiring to be found within this calendar the next day.  (here is a picture of it that I posted this time last year)

The "Advent/Solstice" Calendar 

Juniper, now being the wise and savvy 4-year-old that she is, started asking questions about the calendar.
Juniper:  "So, does this mean that Santa comes by every night to put something in it?"
Tara: "Hmmm... I don't think so, Juniper... I think Santa only makes his rounds on Christmas eve."
Juniper: "Well then who puts things in the pockets every night?"
Tara: "Ummm... I'm not entirely sure how to answer that question."
Juniper: (thinks about it for awhile) "I think it must be the solstice fairies. But I'll leave a note and ask them, just to make sure".

Here is the note...

... and a picture of what Juniper imagined the fairies might look like

And so there you have it.  The magical beings that come out during the holidays are increasing faster than you can imagine.  Besides the old standards, we've now got a Hallowe'en Fairy, and a host of magical solstice calendar beings.  In any event, if I am going to spend the better part of December living up to the growing expectations bestowed upon these magical solstice entities, I figured I might as well make it the focus of the blog for the next few weeks, right?


DECEMBER 1: Lollipops.  We only got the Calendar out on the night of Dec. 1st, so the fairies had to retroactively leave something.  The kids didn't mind.

Yes, lollipops can make you THIS happy.

DECEMBER 2: The fairies left a note directing us to go on an adventure to find berry branches and other such things to make a solstice decoration for the door.  Here are some shots from said adventure:

Our first berry branch!  Juniper put Honey in her ring sling and took her along for the trip.

Taking a break in the woods

Juniper leads the way

The finished product!

 DECEMBER 3: Juniper was left a note suggesting that she find some things to plant.  This was not difficult, as a week ago she had found a seed in a seed pod that had fallen from a tree, and already wanted to plant that.  We also have a few avocado trees that I sprouted from pits that were ready to get potted, so I thought this would be a fun no-brainer. Did you know, however, that potting soil is almost impossible to find this time of year?  After a completely unsuccessful morning spent going from store to store, Linden and I found a mostly used bag in the garage, just in time for Juniper to get home from preschool.  Phew! 

Planting her tree seed

Potting one of the avocado trees.  We ran out of soil AND pots at that point.

 DECEMBER 4:  Juniper had been pushing the "what are these things?" question, so I decided to try and answer it in as meaningful and magical a way as possible.  What resulted was clearly an answer that was far too esoteric. 

Not only did Juniper not really understand, she also wasn't thrilled with her challenge for the day.  I had suggested she keep track of all the kind things she did throughout the day, and that maybe we'd write a note to the fairies, to tell them all about it.  When I asked her at the end of her preschool morning, however, her answer was not quite what I expected.

Tara: "So Juniper, tell me all the nice things you did today!"

Juniper: "Well.... I was going to throw sand, and then I thought 'no! The fairies wouldn't want me to!' So then I didn't".

Tara: Oh. Ummm - anything else?"

Juniper: "("so-and-so") pushed me on the playground, and I didn't push them back.

Ah well.

DECEMBER 5: Today was the day where we were to get out the owls that we made last year (from a kit from our good friend Zsofi), to continue with the festive decorations, and to make some snowflakes to add to the decor.  Juniper didn't stop there - she also wanted to make MORE owls.  So we had a very crafty afternoon, all said and told.

Before we put the snowflakes up, Juniper wanted to play the game where she threw them all up in the air and pretended it was snowing. More than a couple got wrecked this way, but look!  It really does look like it's snowing!

Here they are on the window

Juniper, making a new batch of owls.  Linden actually joined in later on, and made a pretty awesome one himself!

The new and the old, all hanging up together!  Up top is a branch we snagged from a Juniper tree on our berry branch escapades.  This is also where we will hang our Holiday cards, if we get any (hint! hint!). And just fyi, I have a feeling that the fairies might be designating one day very soon as a card-making day, so if you want one and think we might not have your address, send me an email! Longest picture caption ever!

DECEMBER 6: This morning was a package of (organic) gummy bears. The fairies were going to leave a note exclaiming over the excitement that we would all be going to the WHOI Christmas party this afternoon, but Clark declared that that was way too lame, and that the kidsat least deserved a treat if that was all they were going to get. So there you have it. At least they were organic, right?  So were the lollipops, by the way. Only the best quality sugar and dyes for our kids.

And what's been going on besides solstice calendars and the resulting shenanigans? A lot of knitting, for one ('tis the season, after all...)

Juniper, sporting her new hat and gloves

I make a pair of these for Clark every couple of years, so Juniper felt she needed ones as well. They are ridiculously cute on her.

I had originally made this for myself, but it ended up too small.  So I made another one for me,  which means, we now have (sort of) matching hats.  I even fleece-lined them!

Again, I made this hat to fit a head my size. I have no idea what happened. It is actually even kind of too small for Linden.

but look how cute it is!  I think I'll add ear flaps and a tie so that it will stay on properly.

Eating oatmeal and being cute

Story time on the couch

See you next Friday!

(Black) Friday Update!

(American) Family Thanksgiving Dinner

It is Black Friday today - something that has taken new meaning since being in the States. There are, apparently, a whole lot of deals I'm missing out on today (and we are very close to some MEGA shopping).  I'm OK with that.  What that also means, however, is that yesterday was American Thanksgiving - a very big deal here!  So we got on board and had our own little family turkey dinner.  As you can see, Juniper and I put on fancy dresses and "jewels", we decorated the house, and we now have enough leftover turkey to last for the next decade or so. Here are some of the decorations:

I love these… leaves and other seasonal nature items stuck between mactac.  Brilliant.

A turkey.  Obviously.

Annnnddd… another turkey. Turkey crafts are very popular this time of year.

Our myriad of centrepieces.  I arranged the obvious berry branches one, but Juniper was the creative genius behind the other three.

And here are a few other shots from the week:

On the dock at Sphor gardens

Snack time (Spohr Gardens again)

Collecting items for the centrepieces (Beebe Woods)

Pausing by the mossy tree (Beebe Woods)

"Our Squirrel Army is Watching You". Odd, and more than a little creepy. (Beebe Woods)

Some of the older beech trees have faces carved into them in Beebe Woods.  I'm curious if is this was pre- or post-Game of Thrones.  Still - it is more than a little disturbing.

Manning the submarine at the Children's Museum

Juniper's favourite part of the Children's Museum:  getting to dress up as an "astronaut firefighter"

And finally: what is a post these days without a couple of potty-time pictures?  The latest buzz around here is that Linden now officially a toilet pooper.  No diaper pooping in weeks. You have no idea how this improves our general quality of life.  And though he still requests privacy every time he sits down, he makes two exceptions:

Group potty time.  Linden always claims the toilet, but Juniper is happy to sit on the potty and read to him.

Helping teddy learn a thing or two

And that's it for this week.  Happy end of November!