Treasures from the holiday

A gift, handmade by my daughter.  She worries it might not be warm enough, but she made it like 8 feet long so I can wrap it around and around.  I love it.

 

The calm Before...

 

The After...

Holiday Letter 2012

To Austin and back again...

Last year’s letter closed with a bit of foreshadowing that 2012 might offer our family an adventure, and indeed it did with a semester abroad in the Republic of Texas!   It could not have been a better experience.  The people we met, the school Eleanor joined, and the colleagues with whom Mike worked – no one could have been more welcoming.  We made new friends, reconnected with old friends, and learned the genuine pleasure of living within driving distance of parents, brothers, and sisters.  Quite possibly, we were overly courted by a Hill Country spring, but Austin swept us off our feet.

Still, we are really happy to be home.   We missed it here with our house, our friends, our backyard, our delicious tap water.   Our time in Austin revealed a few things, including our inner Hobbit.  While the Pacific Northwest inspires a lifestyle considerably hairier and paler than any other, it is also a life grounded in seasons and sustained by a familiar cycle of creature comforts -- on those two points we are quite smitten.  It’s good to be back in our cozy home.

Spending a mild and sunny spring in Texas made possible weekend after weekend of adventures all around the state, but it also gave us a middle-of-the-country perch from which to launch farther flung trips, like a LittleHouse pilgrimage to Missouri and an awesome two week road trip from Austin to Portland.

The second-grade-Eleanor loves math problems, she’s still playing the violin (we’ve made it to Suzuki Book 2 – Hooray!), she likes making stuff, and she loves playing with her friends.  At almost eight, Eleanor is fair, thoughtful, and (as I’ve said before with great relief) true to herself when it really counts.  These days the big news is: she reads like a maniac.  I dedicate a good portion of the time she’s off reading to finding more books for her to read. 

The chance to mix-it-up a bit at work with Austin’s projects proved to be reinvigorating for Michael.  He still works for the team in Austin and as such he spends some weeks here and some weeks there.  We miss him when he is gone, but when he is in Oregon he is really home.  Like, all the time.  He works from our home office now and eliminating his long commute to Intel’s local site has been great for all of us. 

I feel like I spent the year getting lost, shopping for groceries, and getting lost while shopping for groceries.  It was, of course, a bit more complicated and interesting than that but you get the gist of it.  I continue to serve on two boards, one local and one national, I am slowly moving in and falling in love with the new painting studio in our backyard, and I almost never think about the fact that I turn 40 in 55 days.   (I joke.  Usually it seems kind of young compared to how I feel and that somehow seems like I’m winning a race, which is backwards now that I think about it….)

This year required each of us to s-t-r-e-t-c-h a bit.  And for that I’d like to raise a toast to my little family -- especially to Eleanor -- for meeting the challenge with gusto.  While I hear this kind of shake-up keeps you young at heart, and while I spent many a younger year longing for the uprooting kind of adventure, I guess it’s like that country song for me now.  There’s just no better view anymore than that from my own front porch looking in.

And in the words of the irrepressible Bruce Springsteen… may your strength give us strength, may your faith give us faith, may your hope give us hope, may your love bring us love!

Cookie Day

Mike's side of the family has a tradition they call "cookie day".  It's a day dedicated to the making of that heavily frosted kind of Christmas cookie, which I find really fun to make but too sweet to eat.  We really love our cookie day, but this year we aimed to reduce inventory to an ingestible possibility so we halved the recipe.  While cookie day flew by, we are happy with the smaller stock pile!  We use Mark Bitman's refrigerator cookie dough recipe (and really like the flavor) but the colored icing involves a comma inducing level of powdered sugar (which makes the whole cookie too sweet for my tastes).  If you know how to make a colored frosting without so much sugar, speak up!!!

Stinkin' Cute Santa Craft

My friend Leslie dropped off the supplies and instructions for us to make these napkin rings for our holiday party (we served dinner for 24 people on Christmas day, but we reserved these rings just for the kid-sized guests).  After I did the measuring/cutting, Eleanor did the rest.  Stinkin' cute!

Making Christmas

December is busy with homemade goodies.  Gingerbread houses (even doll sized ones), cookies and gifts...

First Snow!

It only lasted about 30 minutes.  I think we'll have to drive to the mountain this year to get our snow fix.

Holiday Train

We rode the Holiday Express Train this Sunday (the one with the restored steam engine).  It is a short but comfortable ride and Santa makes an appearance.  I booked these tickets with Eleanor in mind, but the truth is, I think, I'm the biggest fan in the family.  Luckily she humors me.

Nutcracker Tea

A local dance school puts on a kid-friendly, shorter version of The Nutcracker ballet each December, and it's called the Nutcracker Tea (they serve tea and cookies afterwards).  It is the best scenes with lots of hard working kids and teens dancing their hearts out.  For years the three girls (Sabina B. + Maggie + Eleanor) have been in the audience.  Our muskateers, through the years...

2012

2010

2009



the muskateers at Peacock Lane in 2008

 

And my personal favorite, this photo below from 2008!

Monster Class

My friend James DeRosso offers clay monster making workshops for all ages.  A small group of friends had a monster bash and here are the results!

Tripping to Austin

Mike still works for the Austin team even though we are living in Oregon again.  This means he works a few weeks here in Oregon (from the house), and a couple of weeks in Austin, back and forth.  He is here more than he is there and with this arrangement he's eliminated his long, daily commute.  This is working nicely for us so far. 

Eleanor and I decided to join him in Austin this past weekend.  We caught up with Eleanor's school friends and their families, and we hung out with my school friends from way back.  We ate outside, comfortably, in shirt sleeves, under the twinkly lights and big live oaks out at Salt Lick.  We shopped for and found boots (wha?!).  We saw the lighting of the tree at the capitol.  We generally just enjoyed our time.

Christmas is Launched!

We can barely wait to turn on the twinkly lights each holiday season.  When the winter rains set in, and it gets a little colder and darker than we'd like it to be, the lights really make the season much more fun.  Since we weren't in charge of cooking the Turkey this year, we launched on Thanksgiving day.  AND, Mike got ambitious and pulled out the train set.  (Eleanor has never seen it before this year! It was a gift to me from my step-Dad when I was in junior highschool, and it hasn't been assembled much in the last 20 years.)

Pink Santa

Here's a funny photo from a visit with Pink Santa this Saturday.  He ate too many pink cupcakes.

Chanterelles

A friend took me mushroom hunting today, in some forest land about an hour and 20 minutes from home.  These are some of the Chanterelles I found in just 30 minutes of hunting.  Fresh dug this way they have an incredible texture.  The large ones pictured are as big as Eleanor's hand.

A weekend away for Stephanie

A day pass to Qua Baths + lots of couch and chatting time with friends... And I thought I didn't like Vegas!

Election Night Celebrations!

We had multiple election wins to bring cheer to our Tuesday night, so we decided rather last minute to head downtown to the campaign party headquarters to take in the celebration. 

Solo Recital

Just before the recital today...

Happy Halloween!

With Pandora's Monster Mash providing our soundtrack, we lit jack-o-lantern 2.0 (jack 1.0 collapsed into goo early this morning), turned on the twinkly lights, and served candy through the spider webbing.  Once Mike and Eleanor (a Paleontologist) finally made it home from their neighborhood quest, and we shut it all down, Mike and I couldn't help but look back on Hallow's Eves past.  Some of that at the end of this post...

Eleanor made Kit's costume

 



 

2007 was the year Eleanor learned the protocals of the trick or treat.  She was 2.5.  We practiced with her at home... I caught a few of her first attempts on video and they totally make us laugh!  You can barely see anything, but you can hear her and she is a hoot.  (If you are on an iPad or other iProduct, you can't see these videos!  You should get to another machine, because they are funny.  Well, if you like to hear a little kid laugh and that sort of thing.)

More from the Hallow's Eve archives...


2005, age 8 months

2007, age 2.5

2009, age 4.5

2008, age 3.5

2010, age 5.5

2011, age 6.5