These little signs make me happy. More rain next week!

Unfolding leaves

Blossoms on trees

Fattening lilac buds

Tulips coming up

Fruit tree flowers

Buds on the neighbor’s magnolia tree

Snowdrops at Lucas’s school

Buds on my plum trees

Lone primrose survivor

We have a class set of valentines to make this weekend for third grade, in addition to a big school project. (Lucas has to build a traditional shelter diorama and write a report—his first major homework assignment ever.) We have opted to make some kitchen valentines for his classmates this year. I’ll tell you about those after we’ve made them. This is what we did last year and it was super fun.

In the meantime, Asher and I had some fun painting coffee filters with watercolor paints (above). The filters really soak up the paint, and the hearts are equally beautiful on both sides. We haven’t decided exactly how to use these yet: window decorations, cards, mobiles … there are so many possibilities! I spent a few moments the other day hacking up a shiny red gift bag into hearts. You can never really have too many of these, just in case.

At preschool, Asher and his classmates have been making valentines for a couple of weeks now. It’s hard work for a 3- or 4-year-old to make enough valentines for all of his friends!

This Valentine Tree is on the third grade nature table at Lucas’s school. The hanging hearts are all made by the students from modeling beeswax.

I still want to come up with some kind of gift for the children, as I do every year. We always have a small breakfast-time celebration on holidays and I like having a wee something to surprise them with. I have loads of paper hearts that I keep year to year, and one thing I always do is to make a pathway of paper hearts leading from their bedroom door to the holiday breakfast table.

Just might have to make these again! How do you celebrate Valentine’s Day with your family?

73 degrees on February 6? I love California! Many thanks to my favorite rock stacker and my favorite acorn planter for showing me this beautiful, local hike to Goose Flat. It was nourishing for my soul and I can’t wait to bring my family here.

All that birthday party hullabaloo I wrote about happened the day before Asher’s real birthday. So on Monday, the day he really turned 4, we celebrated some more, in small ways with just the four of us. It was easy, peaceful, and special.

In the morning, Asher’s place at the table was set out with what I’ve come to think of as the birthday place mat. His birthday crown was there waiting for him (I made it last year). And I set out a big bronze bell. He was delighted when I said, “Today is your birthday! You get to ring the bell.” Asher rung in his fifth year.

The bulk of the day was normal. He went to preschool, Lucas to school. We worked. But in the evening we had a birthday dinner; Daddy cooked him sausages, as he requested. Of course there was a little more dragon cake to be had for dessert.

We used the birthday cake candles to light up the Scandinavian “party chimes.” Ian and I have had these for years, but we ran out of the 1/2 inch diameter candles and haven’t set it up for a long time. Birthday candles worked just fine, and I thought it was perfect: 4 candles, 4 years old.

There was a sweet, spontaneous hug as Lucas read the birthday message he wrote for Asher.

Finally, we gave Asher his birthday gifts from us. We believe in letting Lucas regift his old toys that he doesn’t want or play with to Asher when the time is right and Asher’s ready for them. Lucas is always very pleased to do this. This year, Lucas gave Asher some felt story boards. These were a big hit and we all played with them awhile before we got to any other presents.

Two books (The Three Snow Bears by Jan Brett and The Paper Princess Flies Again (with Her Dog) by Elisa Kleven), a rainbow bowl and scoop, four jewels, a piggy bank, a wooden car, and wooden people and animals that Ian and I made for him.

When it’s time to celebrate, our family does it right!

These are photos leading up to Asher’s birthday party. It was his very first party with friends. He asked for a “Jungle Dragon theme,” after I offered him a choice of “jungle theme” or “dragon theme.” Well, how can you refuse a kid so cute, when he’s so clear about what he wants? I have to admit, Jungle Dragon kind of threw me off for a while. It took a long time to wrap my mind around what we were going to do, and I’ll tell ya, the party stores and dollar stores were no help at all in the theme department.

We had some birthday bunting I sewed last year to use for decorations. Otherwise, we had to get creative. Ultimately, I decided to let the children be the dragons; we just had to create their jungle.

Lucas and I used nearly all of my green file folders to cut out giant and little jungle leaves. We had a light green cardstock on hand, too, so that became leaves as well.

Those Christmas lights are almost always up, so we hung jungle leaves on the wires, and used green crepe paper to create jungle vines with leaves.

Our dear friend Headra offered to stay over and help us get ready for the party. She was awesome and helped with everything from errand running to decorations. Thank you, Headra! With Ian and Headra both working, I was able to focus on the cake, but more about that below.

Lucas did a marvelous job of drawing dragons on all the goodie bags for our wee dragon guests. I purchased little Aladdin-style dress-up slippers, bubbles, and these Mardi Gras (dragon!) masks for Asher’s friends to take home. Four-year-olds love to dress up.

This is the jungle (like fruits, get it?) decoration above the kitchen table, where the children ate jungle pizza and veggies for lunch.

From play silks, I rigged up dragon wings and tail for Asher, and offered play silks to each kid, in case she or he wanted to be a dragon. Two did, two didn’t.

Asher enjoyed his dragon costume before the party started, which was great because he played dragon while we worked on the last minute touches. The costume came off partway through the party.

Ian brought out our Cryolan face paints and painted some dragon tattoos on Lucas and Asher. This was the last thing the three of them did before the guests started arriving, and it was kind of wonderful to see them sit down together to do this quiet activity before all the people came. (Ian, my love, thank you for this little moment you created—all the cleaning and everything!)

We baked chocolate cupcakes and set out three colors of frosting and a bunch of different sprinkles for the children to decorate their cupcakes. It took a little while for them to realize they could put that gloopy, sugary stuff on themselves, but eventually a couple of them started and the rest followed. Asher kept saying, “Mama, you make me a rainbow one.” Once the other kids were decorating their cupcakes, Asher deigned to frost his own. We stuck four candles in Asher’s cupcake and sang “Happy Birthday” to him. The little rascal blew out his candles before we got to the end of the song!

Here’s S Dragon and Asher Dragon. Aren’t they mighty?

Mostly the kiddos wanted to run about and play. So the other activity I had planned (or rather, held in reserve) wasn’t needed after all. Sitting at the table through lunch was hard enough for the children. They needed a run-about break in between lunch and cupcakes, even. So the playdough dragons we were going to make would have meant too, too much sitting.

After the kid party wrapped up, I was free to finish the dragon cake for that night’s family party. We had the grandparents, aunt, and uncles over for dinner and cake. Asher wanted a blue dragon, so that’s what he got!

I’m really happy with how this cake turned out. I used a bunt pan to bake a ring of chocolate cake, then cut it in half to make the S. I also used the leftover cupcake batter to bake an extra square cake, which I cut into sections to create legs, head, and tail. I used candy from the per-pound bins at the supermarket to decorate. The back ridge and the wings are fruit roll-ups (fruit leather made from almost no fruit). Again, special thanks go to Headra for finding several other awesome fruit roll-up products that didn’t have writing embedded in the candy, as the first ones I bought had.

Asher was thrilled to have his school friends over at his house. He enjoyed telling us he was the Birthday Boy. The most amazing thing about this day was how Asher handled it all. I was sure we would see at least one meltdown. It never happened. He was basically cheerful and good-natured the whole time. He accepted the attention he received joyfully. He was a good friend to his buddies and pretty gracious to his family members. We were so very proud of him … we even gave him the dragon’s head to eat!

We held a small ceremony last night to celebrate Imbolc, or Candlemas. It was just the four of us and it was perfect, I think. In my research, Imbolc and Candlemas led me to Saint Brigid, who led me to Brigid, the Celtic triple goddess, who whispered in my ear how very alike she is to Hestia, the Greek goddess of hearth and home. Now, Hestia and I go way back, and at that moment I was instantly comfortable, on familiar turf,  “at home.” I can work with this!

When I create a ceremony or celebration, I have this little tendency to go overboard. When the intention is to celebrate with my small children, I have learned that the key  is to keep it simple. I usually let my imagination run wild for a while, come up with lots of complicated and meaningful ideas, and then I consciously scale it back, make it shorter, and let the symbols speak for themselves.

After dinner, we sat by the fire on our sheepskin rug. I had purchased a 3-inch beeswax pillar candle and we softened some modeling beeswax in warm water. We each fashioned a design or symbol to attach to our “FamilyCandle.” As we did so, I shared a poem about Candlemas Day.

“If Candlemas Day be fair and bright, Winter will take another flight. If Candlemas Day be cloud and rain, Winter is gone and will not come again.”

Then this, which I wrote:

“Round the hearth, with our fire burning bright, we speak from our hearts. With kind words we kindle our hearts’ light.”

We then talked about Imbolc being the midpoint of winter and that after that night, we’d be moving toward the spring. We talked about family and home.

The boys mostly played with the colorful wax and stuck chunks of it on our Family Candle. Asher called his chunk of blue the “rainbow bridge.” Daddy made a beautiful interlocking rings design, with four rings representing the four of us. I made a star with a rainbow and a little blazing fire (because stars and fires mean winter to me, and a rainbow gives me hope for the spring).

Here is our Family Candle in this morning’s light.

Here you can see the boys’ additions to it.

While we modeled our beeswax and added it to our candle, we thought of with words that mean “family” and “home” to us, things we associate with our home and being a family together. We wrote these words in crayon on a watercolor painting I made earlier in the day. Lucas wrote words for himself. Not to be outdone by his older brother, Asher followed suit, with his own version of writing.

Here is our family artwork hanging above our kitchen table. Love, peace, joy, family, us, tribe, prosperity, health, warmth, luck(e), respect, happiness, hope, laughter, help, rest, safety, boys, hearth—and contributions from Asher, such as “squirrel family in the snow!”

Especially for 4-year-old Asher, we did a small motion play from A Child’s Seasonal Treasury by Betty Jones called Groundhog Day.

Bears hug in their caves so snug.    (Hug self with eyes closed; smile.)

Squirrels are restless in their hollow tree.    (Make a hole with one hand, wiggle fingers of other hand through hole.)

Fox family yawns and stretches in their lair.    (Yawn and stretch limbs.)

Groundhog pokes his head from the ground.    (Make large ring with arms and poke head through.)

Whiffs and sniffs and looks around.    (Sniff, look around through hole.)

Will or won’t his shadow be found?     (Nod “yes,” then “no,” shrug shoulders.)

If it is, we all will know     (Nod “yes” and rise to squat position.)

Spring is getting ready to go!     (Spring up in place with outstretched limbs.)

Finally, while we all held our decorated Family Candle together, we finished with this verse by Marsha Johnson.

Bless this candle in our hands.

Bless this flame as here we stand.

Bless the faces ’round this light.

Bless all people on this night.

We’ll be burning this Family Candle during dinner and on weekends when we are home for the rest of winter.

(Last year’s candles)

Today is Imbolc, or Candlemas, if you prefer. Some call it Oimelc; some call it the Feast of Saint Brigid. In the U.S. it’s most commonly called Groundhog Day. Today marks the halfway point between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. Today it’s a good day to divine the weather, a la Punxsutawney Phil, but this little fellow isn’t the first, by far, to do so.

“If Candlemas Day be fair and bright, Winter will take another flight. If Candlemas Day be cloud and rain, Winter is gone and will not come again.”

Today is a great day to make or buy candles. Gather all of your candle stubs and bits and pieces and melt them down to make new candles by dipping or pouring into special candle molds. Winter has a good six weeks left to blow in most places in the Northern Hemisphere and that’s plenty of dark nights to light up.

(Photo from candle dipping at Sacramento Waldorf School last fall)

I have a small candle-oriented celebration planned for our family for tonight. Last year’s was simple, too. We’re going be decorating a “family candle” tonight, if I can get everyone to cooperate. I have in mind a beeswax candle decorated with more (colored) beeswax, with each of us adding pieces to it so that it becomes a representation of our family, our home, and our hopes. It’s my intention that we’ll keep lighting this family candle throughout the rest of the winter.

(Colorful beeswax bits like these can be molded by hand to make shapes, people, and other decorations, and will stick onto the side of a candle.)

In doing a bit of research, I’ve come to understand there’s a significant parallel between Brigid and Hestia, which infuses even more meaning for me into this winter festival. In the dark of winter, and even halfway through it, we must tend to our hearth fires and keep the lamps lighted. We must live, together, in close proximity and in peace as much as we are able. We need such unifying rituals to hold us and keep us safe together.

Today is a great day for a purge or cleaning—of things, of negative feelings, of anything that is needing letting go. Today is a great day to stoke your own inner light, so you may keep it burning brightly as we march toward Spring.

Here are two lovely discussions of this holiday. I hope you enjoy them.

Celebrating the Wheel: Oimelc Overview

Little Acorn Learning: Celebrating Candlemas (with Guest Blogger Marsha Johnson)

Long about this time of year, I go seeking colors. Our gray skies and foggy mornings get old, after a while, and we don’t have any snow to brighten up the landscape. I’m not really complaining, though. I love living here in California. Here are some of winter’s colors I found in my yard or in my neighborhood.

This flowering quince is a harbinger of the spring to come. It’s coral blooms are inspiring me this year.

Redwoods have a comforting feel about them, I think. They seem to say, “Patience, Child. All will be well.”

See the stars? I don’t know the name of these berries, but they’re found on a bush similar to photinia, only with leaves of a darker green. Holler if you know what it is.

This brave trumpet is a hummingbird attractor. It’s kind of limping along in my front yard, where the soil is none too good.

I would absolutely call these fringe flower bushes one of the best landscaping buys I’ve ever made. They are powerhouse bloomers.

Heavenly bamboo. Showstoppers, plain and simple.

We had several glorious, sparkly days in a row last week. (I love California!) For me they culminated in this perfect walk we took last Saturday. Ian, the boys, and I visited a small section of the American River Parkway called the San Juan Rapids trail.

It’s a great, short walk (for little legs), which are compelled to follow brother wherever he may roam.

Even out on a limb, so to speak.

This photo was taken from the top of Crystal Mountain, a giant hill of rocks left over from the days of industrial gold mining. This trail is familiar to Lucas because it’s right near his Waldorf school and he hikes here with his class often—this is good because he gets to be the authority on the area. He likes that very much.

If all goes well, it won’t be too long before Asher is hiking here with his Kindergarten class, hoping to find quartz crystals of his own.

May I present my almost-4-year-old? Isn’t he mighty?

Inspired by SouleMama {this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.