Christmas 2014

Another beautiful Christmas in Vermont! It rained all day, but nothing can melt the perma-snow once it has taken hold so we had a white Christmas anyway. 

Christmas Jammies

Indy's favorite gift: rawhide candy canes.

Austin loved a Beastie Boys
cross-stitch from Mardi.

Gavin built Legos all day, as always.

But his favorite gift was an
African djembe drum.

Lucy loved all her gifts.
All at the same time.

Christmas Music

This has been a season full of music for our family. 

Gavin began playing the trombone this year. He stuck with it, despite being only one of two brass instruments in the elementary school band (one other kid plays a trumpet). He practiced hard for the concert and he did a great job, but was rather drowned out by some others that didn't practice at home quite so hard. Gotta love elementary school band concerts!

Lucy's middle school chorus put on a very nice concert. She's in the back row, in the Santa hat.

This isn't a great photo, but it's evidence that I sang in a choir this year too! (Front row, in red.) The Northfield Community choir joined up with the Norwich choir to do a concert of Christmas songs including Handel's Messiah. It was all worth it just for that! 

Unfortunately (or fortunately?) I don't have photos of our family serenading the ward with the German hymn "Stille Nacht" during the Christmas program -- our first big family concert! We certainly aren't the VonTrapps, even with the Young family singing with us. 

And I don't have any photos of us getting all dressed up to go to the final Hobbit movie . . . so we could attend a production of the Green Mountain Nutcracker ballet immediately afterward. The music was lovely, as always, and we loved the dancing and the quirky, hippy, Vermonty production of the ballet. 

St. Lucia

 St. Lucia has officially graduated to the grown-up candle crown! She looked completely gorgeous last night for the Lucia procession, and only got a little bit of wax in her hair. (We're still working on this!) We got together with the Youngs and with their Swedish friends to make Pepparkakor, Saffron Buns, and fabulous new outfits for the starboys. 

Lucia with silly starboys and beautiful attendant.

Lucia selfie.

Just the girls.

Pepparkakor stars.

Sweet saffron Lussekater buns.

On the way to the neighbors.

So pretty in the dark!

Winter Wonderland

It's definitely winter now. We got 12 inches of heavy wet snow with a layer of ice over the top of that, making it stick to the tree branches and the roads and everything. We won't see dirt again until spring. Lots of our neighbors up the mountain still have no power several days after the storm (in fact, we let one farmer friend park a chest freezer in our barn so he wouldn't lose his whole winter meat storage). It's nice to live rural . . . but not too rural. We are close enough to town that we rarely lose power for more than an hour or two. 

The kids got out of school for two days and took full advantage. They've already been skiing a half-dozen times, not counting all the cross-country skiing they've been doing in the field by the house. And sledding. And getting pulled behind the snowmobile.

Lucky for us, it turns out Indiana is a snow dog! She is as happy romping through the snow as she was swimming in the river. She just bounds through the deep powder with her ears flapping and her tail in the air. She comes in with huge snow balls stuck to her long fur. We stick her in the shower so we can melt them off her legs.