a sigh of quietude

i hope everyone had a merry christmas and is relaxing now, digesting big dinners and too much sweets, enjoying their families and their gifts. we had a wonderful christmas...because of the snow we couldn't go north as usual on christmas eve, but were instead welcomed at bill and beth's ("step" nana and papa) for their traditional christmas eve clam chowder dinner. t'was lovely. we will be traveling north in mid-january, assuming portland ever melts! becky thoughtfully gave us a dinner-in-a-giftbag--nice hormone-free chicken and some pasta and all the fixings for a super delicious smelling and looking marinade, which i threw together last night and is bathing in it's saucy goodness to prepare for dinner tonight. yesterday--christmas day--we drove into eugene and had lunch at the chinese buffet, which was really quite a nice way to deal with not wanting to cook. i unfortunately sprang a migraine christmas eve and was fulfilling my santa duties through a cloud of nausea and discomfort. it woke me several times in the night and was not gone by morning, as i had hoped. so i asked for a mellow morning of gift opening and mostly received it...the migraine faded by noontime, but i still didn't feel like cooking anything...i had a mean craving for chinese food, though. all of the restaurants in cottage grove were closed for christmas, but rodney didn't mind driving into town.

christmas morning was awesome, i loved watching everyone open all their goodies. and we had a christmas miracle! everything that i had sewn for people, using their own clothes as templates, actually fit them! such a relief. rodney really liked his loungy flannel pants (forest green with a pumpkin orange pocket) and vesta still hasn't left her hoo-hoo owl pajama pants. whew! hazel looks adorable in her little apron. jubal loves his magna-doodle type device, drawing on it and getting others to draw things on it for him about a hundered times a day, if not more. and at the last minute i got him a little elmo doll for his stocking, which he checks on and kisses and hugs all throughout the day. vesta got TWO! beatles cds and the fab four crooned all day in our house. they also got some modeling clay and at one point in the day disappeared to their room for a while, i assumed to play their new game, but emerged a bit later to show me some crazy clay figures they had made...vesta made this amazing mermaid, that managed to look swirly and underwatery...hazel made a couple of different cats and, most notably, a veeeeery creepy looking baby with a giant fat butt and an ill-proportioned bright red penis. i am cracking up even now, thinking about it. it was as if she made a little baby boy and then put a dog penis on him! i'm sorry if i offend anybody out there, but it was sooooo funny.

i will be enjoying the next few days, thinking about the new year and what i may wish to resolve to do in it...vesta will be traveling to california to visit her good friends that moved away, hazel has a huge sleep over planned at ronan's house to stay up late and ghost hunt and about a million other things they've planned. busy, wonderful times.

i am grateful for:
love
my husband
my sweet children
that some chinese restaurants stay open on christmas
my new kleen kanteen, which rodney gave me for christmas and which i have coveted for many months now

toiling on

rodney got a bike trailer for jubal--our early christmas gift to ourselves and our main tool of survival during the making of this years christmas gifts for others. whenever he takes jubal out for a long spin, i sew and sew and sew. i'm learning so much about what i thought i knew. heh. it's fun and hard and necessitates the changing of plans and ideas...which is okay. i'm enjoying the process, though i do wish i could get one of those bike rides to last two days straight so i could just finish everything already!

i am planning to make a pair of pajama style pants for vesta...i make little pants for jubal with some frequency, but i'm starting to have a niggle of fear that it won't be quite so easy and i'll wreck my chance at 4 yards of virgin flannel. eek. the flannel is so cute! a warm browny color with tons of little owls in different positions all saying "hoo hoo". i hope she loves them. i'm contemplating making hazel an apron, so that she, too, will have something mommy-made. i'll be making jubal a softy book with clear vinyl windows to hold photographs--he LOVES looking at pictures, especially of him and daddy. i'm really looking forward to the completion of that one, it's gonna be awesome. plus, i'm making some other stuff...ahem.

so. the assembly meeting is tonight, at which, hopefully, the fate of blue mountain will be decided. at least for the rest of the school year (if there is one for us...cross your fingers!). i'll let you know what i learn.

i hope you're enjoying the days leading up to thanksgiving and the planning of your winter holiday gifts and adventures. i love you!

at this moment i am grateful for:

love
hope
change
rootedness
family
creation