I’d just like to pop in and say Happy New Year! It’s been a lovely winter break around here these last several days, even though I’ve been working quite a bit this week—more than in most years, actually. I’m glad to have the work, and yet still yearn for the downtime, especially while everyone is at home.

There has been lovely block play,

some reading of How to Train Your Dragon, and quite a bit of cozy “Avatar: The Last Airbender” viewing.

Ian tackled some home renovation projects, including fixing a gate and finishing the Hearth Project (which was started and abandoned half finished more than eight years ago). Here is the beautiful result:

Lucas has practiced on his new skateboard from uncle Jon.

And Asher has worn his new chaps and vest (a precious family heirloom of our friends, loaned to us while they fit) in a most creative way.

So, that’s pretty normal right, for the last days of a year: continuing on, finishing, fixing, solving, resting, mulling, embracing new challenges, learning new skills, reinventing old stuff to be new again?

Relax. Review. Renovate. Remember. Reinvent.

Well, it’s normal around here.

Wishing you all the best in the New Year!

We have our Christmas tree now! We fetched it last Saturday from the bargain store for $10. Although driving up to an Apple Hill tree farm and cutting our own tree is one of my favorite family traditions, we felt this year that being frugal with both our time and money was a fair trade-off.  It’s easier to adapt if your traditions don’t have you in a stranglehold, I think. And being adaptable is important.

Ian’s very handy with a Sawzall. Doesn’t he look handy? Our bargain Douglas Fir tree is fresh and smells wonderful!

We got it all decorated in one afternoon. To me our ornaments are like old friends; I’m glad to see them every year. Lucas was touched by all the “Baby’s First Christmas” ornaments that are his. (I regret that we don’t have many of those for Asher.)

I’m surprised at how many Waldorf wool angels we now have to hang on our tree!

Then we played with funny glasses from Captain Jack’s Smiley Bar to see smiley faces on our tree! Thanks T!

And thank goodness for SomaFM’s “Christmas Lounge” station—it’s Christmas music recordings that you mostly haven’t heard before. Happy listening!

We used one of our precious Family Days during the Thanksgiving holiday to visit the Aerospace Museum of California, which happens to be in our town on a closed Air Force base. Ian and Lucas like this place a bunch. I was mainly along for the traveling StarTrek exhibit, which had … um … too many rules.

Needless to say, we all had fun punching buttons on the Enterprise bridge and raising the deflector shields. Asher’s big idea was to fire the phasers on the aliens. We declined to pay $20 for a photo of Ian in Kirk’s chair. I found the costumes from the various TV shows to be pretty interesting.

In the main museum, we saw an exhibit about the future “Manned Mission to Mars” (planned for 2034), including this replica of the Phoenix Mars Lander …

… and a movie about what going to Mars will be like someday.

There’s a mini jet plane for the kiddos.

And outside they have a good number of real airplanes from various eras. This is Lucas in the cockpit of the “Warning Star,” an intelligence gathering plane. Asher was the cutest copilot ever.

An older gentleman docent inside that plane talked with me for quite a while about serving as ship’s engineer. He flew 6,000 hours on this type of plane, and his job was to monitor these gauges and manually tweak the fuel mixture for either fuel efficiency or increased power, depending on the situation. He blushed after a few minutes and exclaimed, “I don’t get many ladies asking me about this stuff. Most ladies don’t get it.” Ha! It was fun to make his day.

Ian always knows where to find the danger. Especially when it’s this well marked. (This is the side of a Coast Guard helicopter.)

I’m not the biggest airplane fan, and frankly, I don’t need to return to this museum for a couple of years. But my boys enjoy it plenty.  And some of this stuff is pretty nifty even to me, like these cogs inside an engine on display.

The StarTrek exhibit is there until January, in case you want to check it out.

We have a quiet Thanksgiving Day today. Quiet enough to think a bit about what I’m grateful for.

* My beautiful sons, strong, brilliant, and hale. They are the sunlight of my days. They have transformed me.
* My loving, noble husband who takes care of all of us and brings out the real me. He is my shelter and my heart.
* My parents and Ian’s parents, for all that they are and do, and for all they helped us to become.
* My precious, clever, quirky, shining friends. They know why.
* My safe, comfortable home filled with all that I really need and lots more besides.
* My ever-hungry brain and my many hobbies, which nourish me in so many ways. I am still growing.
* My undeniable, abundant opportunities, a plethora of blessings and experiences that I’ve enjoyed all my days. I am especially grateful that we can now offer amazing opportunities to our children as they grow.
* My family members whose love and courage are so great that they do the tasks that no one else wants to do.

We are so very, very rich. I am sending out my love to all of you on this Thanksgiving Day. Blessed be.

With a Twist …

“We thank you for our day,
We thank you for our friends and family,—”

“—Especially Daddy!”

“Yes. We thank you for each other,—”

“—Especially Daddy!”

“We thank you for our good health,—”

“—Especially Daddy!”

“We thank you for our big, beautiful earth,—”

“—Especially Daddy!”

“And we thank you for our rest.”

“Especially Daddy!”

“Especially Daddy. Blessed be.”

I love you, Bascha. Thank you for spending your life with me. To me you are rainbows and ocean breezes, sunsets and a warm bed.

I knew we were destined for a pizza dinner; Ian was sick and he does most of the cooking around here. The kids love pizza and it’s really easy at the end of a long week to slip into a take-out meal, but who wants to spend $30 on pizza?

The stars were all aligned:

• It was 4:30 and I had a bit of time.
• I had harvested eight gorgeous tomatoes from our family garden the day before.
• I had fresh, organic veggies from our CSA delivery.
• I had bread dough in the fridge, ready to shape and bake.
• I had assorted cheeses and meats on hand.

I’ve never made pizza sauce from scratch before. It’s really very easy. Fresh tomatoes, red chard, onions, garlic, fresh oregano, dried basil, and about 2T organic tomato paste.

We call this “finger salad” at our house. When we don’t have lettuce or spinach, we just pull out all our other salad veggies and serve them with a dollop of dressing for dipping.

It looks like an all-meat pizza (chicken, salami, and bacon), but the sauce contained lots of fresh veg. Hiding the veggies helps ensure that Asher will eat them. This whole meal was unscripted: The only thing that was hard to guage was how long to bake the pizza for. I had to put it back in for another 12 minutes. Next time I’ll know to bake for about 30 minutes to cook the crust more.

Every slice was eaten up!

Happy Equinox! Happy Mabon! Happy Last Day of Summer!

It was a busy day. I had originally planned to celebrate the equinox on the 23rd, but when I looked closer at the exact time of the equinox, I decided it couldn’t wait till tomorrow. (Tomorrow we can celebrate the First Day of Autumn!)

We’ve been watching for signs of Autumn around here. Mama’s been scoping out all the garden plants with a project in mind….

After a quick, $9 trip to the craft store today, we came home with a flat twig wreath base, some floral picks (wooden picks with a small amount of wire on one end), and some green floral twine, which we ended up not using. We wandered around our front and back yards and clipped little snippets off trees and shrubs, including liquidambar leaves (still green), flowering plum leaves (purple), mallow, Chinese elm, Japanese maple (purple and green), redwood sprigs, pittosporum, and lantana berries, heavenly bamboo fruits, rose hips, lavender flowers, and the spiky flowers from some ornamental grass. We also walked up the street a little ways and gathered fallen bits of live oak leaves.

While the vegetable soup was cooking I tried to get the kids interested in making the wreath with me. At first they couldn’t be bothered because they were too busy chasing around the backyard. But after I got the first layer on the wreath base, it caught Lucas’s eye and he came to help me. He did a great job of adding to the wreath, and especially enjoyed using the floral picks to wire items without strong stems into the wreath.

We pulled some deep orange/bronze seed lanterns off our goldenrain tree, plucked a touch of dusty miller, and added some rosemary from our herb patch. We added in a few acorns we had gathered from the neighborhood yesterday. Basically, if it was interesting and sturdy enough to be stabbed into our wreath, we used it. I’m delighted with all the colors our wreath has! I had feared that not enough foliage had begun to turn fall colors yet, and that it would be bland.

Here is the finished wreath, sans baby toes and with a few sticks we had gathered and displayed last spring. Ian helped us hang our equinox wreath above our nature table (which is really the top of our upright piano) in our great room. Since these plants are largely fresh, our wreath will wither and wilt over time. It may begin to fall apart, which in itself will be symbolic of the seasonal changes. I’m interested to see how well or poorly it lasts. I’ve never made one of these before.

Lucas then chopped our “finger salad,” mere raw zucchini rounds into halves, symbolizing that today the day and night are perfectly equal. While he did, Ian asked him math questions, which was fun.

Our backyard equinox table setting (blue plates for night, yellow plates for day, of course). I didn’t take a photo of our yummy vegetable lentil quinoa soup. (I’m no food photographer!) We ate homemade bread and soup and zucchini halves, and talked about what summer things we were thankful for (swimming lessons, swim team, Waldorf summer camp, play dates, our anniversary trip to Seattle, Burning Man—particularly because we came home with four noses, eight eyes, eight ears, 16 limbs, and 80 digits!).

We finished our celebration with pumpkin pie! Asher helped with making the pie crust and Lucas mixed up the filling and helped me roll out the crust.

And now, the holiday is done and I’m beat! Good night, and may the many blessings of the season be yours.

Thank goodness today has been Sunday. We’re tired from staying up too late last night. We’re feeling a bit drained from all the … well, small challenges that we’re presently facing: expensive car repairs, viruses, rush projects. Even Ian is working this weekend, which isn’t something he has to do too often.

It’s fine. Everything will be all right.

Housework. Sick boys. Freelance work. These are the things that have occupied our time this weekend instead of what we had planned: our annual trip to Mimi’s cabin in Strawberry in the Tahoe forest, to visit her and grandpa. Feverish children changed our plans.

We’re in a bit of a slump, you might say.

However, there were several sweet highlights. Like unexpected visits from friends, who fill up my heart with love and see deep inside me.

Low-key, take-it-easy play and movies to ease the disappointment, sickness, and crabbies. I think Lucas is well enough to return to school tomorrow, which is great because he’s feeling pretty blue and misses his friends.

The delicious mushroom, spinach, onion omelette Ian made me for breakfast.

A few feverish smiles and the wonderful opportunity to climb on Dad.

Some sewing for mama. I got to complete a small knot doll I started a month or more ago. She’s for Asher and I sewed all her clothing, hat, and hair today, using just leftover bits and bobs.

Ian said she looks a bit like a preschool teacher, and Asher immediately named her after his own teacher. So sweet.

I’m trying my hand at a new bread-making method. We’ll see how that turns out…. I also managed to finish a work project today, so that feels good, too.

And as for the rest of today, I’m thinking of snuggles and food and an early bedtime for all.

Here is my electroluminescent wire (EL wire) coat for Burning Man. My talented husband made it for me. I asked for flowers and I absolutely love it! Ian is the BEST! (Thanks also go to E for giving me the coat several years ago.) We are going to be the glowingest family of four on the playa this year.