Cardboard boxes are timeless. I'm not sure why sleeping in a cardboard box gets such a bad rap. :)

Christmas Break

This Christmas break was stellar. We indulged on hot tubbing, well crafted food, and lots of lazy days.  The kids enjoyed walks with Nana to visit the neighbors goats and their cousin Molly's 2 year old birthday. Brady wrote a management symposium paper while I read frivolous magazines. 

Elsie is wandering around the house yelling "Nana! . . . Papa!" We miss them.

We even walked to our gate and exchanged a few words with Lord of the Rings' Viggo Mortensen at the SLC airport. (He was just as stoic and gracious as he is on all his movies, just a little taller.)

As much as we love the novelty of D.C., it was also great to be in cushy Utah. It's nice to be in a place where women run without pepper spray and where I don't stand out as the only white person at the grocery store. 

Losing, finding, losing, finding.

Every year as the cold winter weather comes, I ritually  gain 5-10 lbs. I get lax about exercise. I eat bowl after bowl of my mother -in-laws Christmas Eve clam chowder. I spend a little too much time inside, and inevitably it happens. 

Then the snow melts, my running mileage increases, the hot weather pushes me towards salads and fruit platters.  My mother, in mom-like fashion, reveals I'm "too skinny'', and one day I look in the mirror and discover my pants are too loose, and the 5-10 lbs are gone. It works on schedule year, after year, after year.

This year those extra pounds won't personally offend me. In fact, they're expected guests.  I'll use my New years resolution on something good- like learning Spanish or practicing the piano.
After all, the only one who really notices is my favorite pair of jeans. And luckily, they can't talk.

Christmas time in Utah

Someday she'll grow up

Sometimes I forget that one day she'll grow up. Sometimes I think we'll always have time to snuggle together before bedtime and read an endless number of books.  I forget that one day she wont be a one year old anymore and she wont always need help getting down the stairs.  It will be a little bit of a sad day when I, her mother, am not the first thing on her mind when she wakes in the morning.  Weather I can picture it or not, one day she'll get her own breakfast and she'll craft her own opinions of the world.  One day I'll wish she was a little more reliant on me and a tad less independent.

Some days, in a mothering haze, I wish to speed things up. I just want to take a shower in peace without little hands and whining sounds coming through the crack at the bottom of the door.  Some days I tacitly tell myself that I'd exchange life's simple joys all for shoes to get on quicker.  But then, I look at her with her blue eyes and curly hair and I smile and think "Ah, what's the rush?" and get back to washing sippy cups. 
 

 

National Botanic Garden

 

  Immaculately kept gardens are a drag.  When I  look at a flower bed I want to and see big, discernible, chunks of compost. I like to find a nascent plant on the brink of 'going invasive' and also be surprised to see the plant that's been declared dead come back up from plant hell.  This week we enjoyed the hot, wet air of the National Botanic Garden.  It wasn't to see fake looking real plants, but to be wowed by their Christmas display (Thomas the train whirling around plant constructed Thumbelina style fairy houses.)  

Oh how I love Christmas. The songs, the food, the glowing tree, and all the warm memories.  We've  already eaten 2 entire chocolate advent calendars and attended an Israeli Hanukkah feast. Liam made a green and red paper chain and we are counting down the days.