Today is my Mom’s birthday. Xmas encompasses 3 parental birthdays and an anniversary. It’s hard to keep up. But my Mom is special. I love her dearly.
We are currently blessed with meat right now. We’re finishing a ham and a roast from various holiday events. The house is quiet and the rain has started.
I didn’t realize that the line to give things away at Good Will would be so long. I guess everyone is using this time to clean house. We said goodbye to precious balance bike and trike and push car. Such wonderful memories. Now we have new big girls bikes and razors!
We celebrated New Year’s Eve with biking at Golden Gardens using my new rocking bike rack so we can actually motor our bikes away from the house. It increases my radius of biking significantly. It was neat to find out the rack fits in our small garage so we can keep the rack on longer than expected. J&C came over and we enjoyed another PCC meal. It takes the stress out of cooking immensely. Having visitors is a perfect excuse to clean the house. We organized all the art supplies that kept spilling out of their boxes. We discovered we actually have writing paper, it was just hidden away. The girlies all exchanged presents.
On another day, Johanna came to visit unexpectedly. In 15 min, we cleared all the Xmas detrious off the floor and into rooms. It’s amazing how motivating guests can be.
We hung with friends on New Year’s day. The play was delightful with Alex, Sam, Kate, Jonathan, Jane and later Jack. I walked the interurban in the sunshine and walked by the cemetery. We observed a new tradition of the smashing of the gingerbread house with some kids bravely eating parts. Our gingerbread houses had no smashing, only quiet trashing.
Today was a chore day. We cleaned the house to be ready for the work week. I made a ham, white bean, kale soup for dinner that was delicious. The hamhock made great broth. Sara and I had a nice snuggle and prayer before bed. We celebrated the 9th day of Xmas by putting all the Xmas presents officially away. Everything has a place now. I read both girls Gift of the Magi by O. Henry. It’s always had a special meaning to me. The words are complex and the girls frowned at times. They related to the long hair of Della. We’ll talk more about the magi on Epiphany. Then Sara wanted to read Mortimer’s Christmas. That made it feel very much like a day of Christmas. This vacation has been such a joyful time. Thank you, God.