Christmas Week

It's so delightful to go to bed on Christmas Eve knowing that all the weeks of preparation, parties, wrapping, shipping, and baking are DONE and a whole beautiful week of family time stretches out ahead of us!   Mother nature obliged by sending down soft white snowflakes all Christmas Day and most of the week, so it felt like we were living inside a cozy Vermont snow globe. 

The children in their Christmas jammies from Gram and Papa.  This is pretty much their uniform for the week: the perfect outfit for watching movies, reading books, playing Wii, going skiing, doing projects, and hanging around in their new beanbag and papasan chairs from Santa.  And, of course, Lego building.



Gavin spent the better part of two days building his new Ninjago Fire Temple and playing with the Fire Dragon and Ninjago figures that came with it.

Lucy built the Burrow from Harry Potter, though I think her favorite part was playing with the Bellatrix Lestrange and Molly Weasley figures, re-enacting the final battle for Hogwarts. ("Not my daughter!  Aaaaagh!")

Austin's favorite gift was from Lucy.  Back at Thanksgiving, we searched the house for a football he could take to his Turkey Bowl game, but found only some squeaky baby toys and mini-foam balls.  So Lucy decided her dad needed his own real, grown-up-size football for Christmas.  A brilliant gift for the man who loves sporting goods, wish I'd have thought of it.

I ended up with a lovely stack of good books to keep me occupied for the week, along with some bubble bath and chocolates from Montpelier's best sweet shop.  Books, candy, and time to read . . . what could be better?

I only got two books read, though, because I was having so much fun playing with my new camera!  It was a big splurge, even for a combo birthday-Christmas gift, but I've wanted one for SUCH a long time.  It's just like Sharon's (the kids even call it the Gram-Cam).  I love it, it's almost impossible to take a bad picture.  Expect some major improvements to the blog photos in the new year!

December Traditions

Advent Calendars

This year we decided to do two advent calendars to count down the days until Christmas, in addition to our tradition of unwrapping and reading one Christmas book each night.   Lucy made her own calendar from a kit.  We filled the pockets with candy.  But the candy had a strange tendency to disappear too early . . . hmmm, I wonder why?  Gavin was better about not opening the pockets on his Star Wars Lego advent calendar until the right days.

Yoda-dressed-as-Santa was behind the final door of Gavin's advent calendar.  Love it.  Who else could possibly play Santa? 

St. Lucia Day

I know that one of these years, December 13th is going to roll around and Lucy is going to decide she doesn't want to dress up as Lucia.  But for now, I just love to watch her throw herself into the role of the Swedish snow-maiden who brings goodies to friends and neighbors.  She looks so beautiful in her white dress, red sash and candles.  And Gavin plays Lucia's Starboy sidekick with equal enthusiasm.

Gavin's teacher once studied abroad in Sweden, so she asked Lucy if she would be willing to come to first grade for a Lucia procession.  Lucy was a super good sport about it.  We got the kids all outfitted in Lucia crowns and Starboy hats and brought cookies to the principal, staff, and some teachers.

Red and Green Dinner

We invited our friends to join us for a red-and-green dinner to celebrate the season.  (Main course this year: spaghetti with red sauce or green pesto.)  After dinner, I gave the kids frosting and star cookies to make either a Christmas tree or (since we had Jewish friends joining us) some blue Hannukah stars.  The tree branches were a little unstable -- I assumed one rolo would be enough to serve as a "trunk" between cookies -- but the trees were eaten so quickly they didn't have a chance to fall down.

Bethlehem Dinner

December was a crazy-busy month with so many things going on, so we decided to do our annual Bethlehem dinner as just a family event.  We dressed up as shepherds and sat on the floor and ate with our fingers.

It was a feast beyond the means of most ancient Hebrew shepherds, I would venture to say.  Honey-orange chicken roasted in a clay pot, couscous, almonds, grapes, olives, pomegranates, cheese, pita and hummus.  And, of course, pasta with alfredo.  This last dish might not be so historically authentic, but I'm sure the baby Jesus would have loved it just as much as my kids do.

Thoughts on Santa

In the past few weeks, both of our kids have had major crises of faith regarding Santa.  The first was Gavin’s when, reading ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, he discovered that Santa smokes a pipe.  Having been thoroughly indoctrinated in the evils of tobacco both at church and at school, the poor kid was horrified.  “But I thought Santa was a Mormon!” he cried.  (Cue long discussion about how people who smoke can still be good people, and not all good people are Mormons.)

The second crisis was Lucy’s.  After a couple of years of dancing around the subject, she finally came up and asked me directly whether Santa was real. 

This is a very, very difficult question for me to answer.

Long ago, before we had kids, I found myself swayed by the argument that if I tell my children to believe in Santa and tell them to believe in God, then say “just kidding” about Santa, they will never have faith in God.  Like many philosophical notions, this one crumbled in the face of parental realities.  Trying to explain to a wide-eyed, two-year-old Lucy that Santa is a metaphor simply didn’t work.  Toddlers don’t get the concept of metaphor – and anyway, the explanation wasn’t completely satisfying to me.

My mother absolutely, positively believes in Santa.  I have never heard her concede that Santa isn’t the one who fills the stockings and brings the “big” present on Christmas.  Mom doesn’t believe in all magical holiday creatures: one of my favorite memories is of the year she declared herself “too tired” to be the Easter Bunny, and sent my brother Dave and I out to get basket filler for all our younger siblings.  Mom has spent many a Christmas afternoon fast asleep, but has never been “too tired” on Christmas Eve.  Even in the face of my dad’s perennial grouchy Grinchiness, Christmas morning has always been magical at my house.

I guess I have to admit it.  I believe in Santa too.

Is there a fat guy in a red suit hanging out with reindeer and elves at the North Pole, squeezing down chimneys and smoking his pipe in people’s living rooms?  I’ll grant you, probably not.  But I firmly believe in all the wonder and magic and charity that Santa embodies.  There is something special about Christmastime that is hard to put into words.  It has to do with divine love and the incarnation of God into the form of a tiny Jewish baby, but all of that is mysterious and theologically complex.  I’m not sure I can entirely grasp it, much less explain it to a kid.  The image of a jolly, omniscient, loving but sternly judgmental Santa Claus fulfills my need to personify (my postmodernist friends would say “reify”) the meaning of the baby in the manger.

I admit that every Christmas morning, a small part of me wonders if there will be a surprise by the tree that wasn’t there when I went to bed the night before.  Some token left by a guy in a sleigh.  Every year I wake up to squeals of joy from my children and come downstairs and find that everything is as I left it the night before.  But somehow I find that I’m not disappointed by this.  I may have bought the gifts and stuffed the stockings myself, but all of these things become transformed in the night.  By the time the kids wake up, the magic has happened.  Santa has come.

Yes, Lucy, there is a Santa Claus.

Upcycling

Here in Vermont, there is an old Yankee Farmer ethic of "making do with what ya got," which comes together with the newer hippie ideal that everything is recyclable.  This has created a trend toward "upcycling" -- taking old or useless objects and tranforming them into something artsy and cool.  When Austin discovered people making furniture out of skis, it awakened his inner Vermonter.

My dear husband, great afficionado of sporting equipment that he is, never could stand to see skis being thrown away.  Ever since we moved to Vermont Austin's been collecting old skis found at ski swaps, propped against roadside "free" signs, and even a lone ski that floated down the stream.  Finally, last week, he got out the tools and transformed three pairs of skis into an upcycled Adirondack chair.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that he didn't actually build the whole chair.  He found an old chair cheap on Craigslist and replaced its back slats with skis, thus rescuing both the chair and the old skis.  Double upcycling!

On a roll, Austin found an old snowboard and turned it into a rack to hold our cross-country skis out in the barn.

Then we ordered a pair of metal supports so he could build us a bench made of two gorgeous old black and orange snowboards.  (Here he is multitasking: building a bench while watching football.)

It's a beautiful bench and very sturdy, as you can see.  The plan is to put the snowboard bench out by the snowboard ski rack so we can sit on it while gearing up for a cross-country ski run.  Though if we don't get some snowpack soon, Austin may just end up making all of our winter sports equipment into furniture...!

Swim Team

Lucy has come up with a great way to get through this long, cold, dark Vermont winter: she joined the Central Vermont Swim Club!  Two nights a week we take her over to the pool at Norwich and she swims laps for an hour and a half.  She LOVES IT and is gaining some excellent skills in the water. 

I'm so proud of my little fish!

Turkey Day

This year we got another "real" turkey for our Thanksgiving dinner.  "Real" in the sense that the turkey spent its short life running around happy and free on a local farm, and would remain so until it was time for it to become our dinner.

Lucy overheard me telling Austin this and burst into tears.  How could we be such cold, unfeeling people, to end the life of a turkey just for our own selfish enjoyment?  For Lucy, poultry are friends, not food.  She refused to talk to us for the rest of the night.

Subsequent conversations about how a turkey is fulfilling its purpose in life by being roasted for Thanksgiving left Lucy unmoved.  Gavin likewise.  He announced that from now on he only eats things that can't escape.  As in, "I'll eat apples, Mom, because they don't have any legs.  But I won't eat turkey because turkeys can run away from me."  How can parents respond so such impeccable logic?

The turkey arrived, clean and plucked, on Sunday night.  The children responded by putting on a play in which a turkey chases a Pilgrim and tries to eat him, until both Pilgrim and turkey decide to eat macaroni and cheese instead.  But this was their only act of civil disobedience for the night.  The turkey went into a big cooler of ice water and out to the back porch.

On Tuesday night I cooked up this delicious brine: apple cider, orange peel, fresh rosemary, bay leaves, peppercorns, and lots of kosher salt.  The turkey bathed in the brine through the day on Wednesday, then that night I put it in the oven at 225 degrees.

When I checked the turkey at 6:00am, it was waaaaaay past done.  I should have realized that our turkey was only about half as big as the ones the farmers planned to cook and adjusted their recommendations accordingly.  But despite having cooked it too long, the turkey was amazing.  Juicy and delicious, falling off the bone like it had been cooked in a crock pot, with just a hint of the fruity savory brine.  Wow.

Lucy and Gavin decorated the house with turkey tributes.  This one is Gavin's.  Look how huge the turkey is compared with the corn stalks.

Some of Lucy's decorations.  Under the abstract "I Heart Thanksgiving" sign is a sketch of a turkey with pleading eyes and the words "Don't eat me, I don't taste good." 

"Turkeys Taste Bad!" declares this lovely decoration.  Fortunately, the kids confined their Thanksgiving protest to these posted placards and otherwise allowed our dinner to go forward without a hitch.  It helped that our friend Alma joined us.  Nothing like a little company to quell rebellion.

Alma brought a fruit basket which provided Gavin with the entirety of his Thanksgiving feast.  (One apple and 6 grapes.)  Lucy consumed two large packages of her favorite Boston Market mac n' cheese.  And the rest of us enjoyed the most wonderful turkey I have ever eaten.  Those kids really have no idea what they are missing out on.

Costume Swap

The kids picked their Halloween costumes in July, as usual.  Gavin wanted to be Captain Jack Sparrow, and Lucy followed her usual literary theme and chose Tonks from Harry Potter.  While gathering the pieces of their costumes, I picked up a moose costume on sale for me, thinking maybe this year I wouldn't be the lame mom who never dresses up.

Naturally, it was the moose costume that was the real hit.  Gavin wore the "hooves" around the house for days.  He even ate his breakfast with them on.

When the day came for trick-or-treat at Norwich, Gavin ditched the pirate suit to be the moose.  (Much to the disappointment of my students, who hoped to see me in it.)

Lucy, meanwhile, had discovered the old inflatable chicken suit we've had around since she was a toddler and decided that was the costume for her.

She even went as the chicken for her school UNICEF parade.

Gavin decided neither moose nor pirate would do for the UNICEF parade, and dug out an old ghost costume from the dress-up box.  So that meant I could finally be the moose. 

Gavin and his friends "petting" the moose.

So what did we do when the real Halloween came around, you ask?  Well, Lucy decided to trick-or-treat as Tonks after all.  Gavin wore the ghost suit and went as an "albino Dementor."  Austin was cold so he decided to wear the moose head.  And I went in my usual guise as the lame mom who doesn't dress up.

Easter Egg Chickens

Our Araucanas laid their very first egg today!

It's a soft blue-green color. So pretty!

The chicks have grown up to become beautiful little hens.  "Mellow" is the orange-black one and "Noisy" is white and black.  They are easily distinguished by their colors and their very particular personalities.  I love their feather-beards especially.  And these colored eggs are SO fun!  The Araucanas are not nearly as smart as the Rhode Island Reds -- Mellow keeps getting her head stuck through the fence, or she jumps out and can't figure out how to get back in -- but I think they are a great addition to our family farm.



Soccer Star

This fall, Lucy decided she wanted to play on the Northfield Dynamos girls soccer team.  Considering the fact that she probably couldn't even identify a soccer ball until a couple of months ago, it was a pretty steep learning curve. We supplemented the practices by having our own Gray Family soccer games most nights.  Gradually, she stopped saying "eeeep" whenever the ball came her way, and learned to avoid the impulse to use her hands.  Austin made her watch soccer with him on TV.  Considering where she was when she started, she was pretty great by the time the season ended with a final big win on Saturday.

She absolutely had a blast.  Lots of her good friends from 3rd and 4th grade were on the team.

 Home games were at a field next to a cemetery.  (They aren't actually playing in the cemetery, it just looks that way from these pictures.)

Thank goodness Grandma sent her a red sweatshirt so she didn't freeze on chilly days!  Though most of the time she appeared to be playing for Team Snowbird.

 The coach was wonderful.  He was one of the girls' dad, but also coach of the Montpelier High School boys soccer team.  He taught them very well and spent practices running drills.  (Gavin: "I don't get it Mom.  When are they going to get out the drills?"  Evidently he thought there would be power equipment involved.)  Even though the coach was a "pro" he did a great job of keeping it fun and emphasizing inclusiveness and sportsmanship.

Who wouldn't love playing with these silly girls?

Pumpkin Party 2011

Lots of wonderful old friends and new friends at this year's Gray Family pumpkin carving night.

 

As usual in Vermont, it was too chilly to carve outdoors.  But the kids went out to the porch for the all-important Jack-O-Lantern lighting.

No jacket, no shoes -- Gavin is oblivious to the cold.  Lucky him.

 Lucy's Jack-O-Lantern is covering up the one on her shirt.

oooooooh, SPOOOOKY!!!!