Christmas Joy

Merry & Bright

Anna and I love doing our holiday card.
This year we actually received an email response from a neighbor who also loves holiday cards. See below:

45 cards received to date and hands down yours takes my coveted award!
Have a wonderful Christmas and congrats on the card!
Sara

I have to say, this made me :)!
So, may your holiday be merry and bright, and may 2010 be full of all good things!!

New Pantry/Entryway

They are still unfinished, but here is a glimpse of the new spaces....oh, and with boys. If you click on the photo you can see a great close up of these silly boys!

Traditions

Each year we go out and cut a tree for the holiday. Some years it has been in the back woods of friends' houses and lately we've been going to a tree farm. This year, Anders picked the tree. We wanted one spacious enough to put our birds nests in and he found it so quickly. We have about a dozen birds nests that we have collected and we place them on the tree along with a whole bunch of feathered birds. Anders and Kuba both decorated this year and it was so amazing to watch them chatting and talking to the birds and deciding where they would go. Luckily, we've been able to capture the last 4 years with photo's. It's fun to look back and remember. And it's amazing to see how quickly time flies.
Today I am feeling very grateful for a wonderful tradition like this one.
2009
Anders and Kuba
2008
Anders, Kuba, Anna, and Judy
2007
Anders and Anna (Kuba was in the baby bjorn on me and I was taking the photo...)
2006
Judy, Anders and Anna-pre-Kuba.

Humpty Dumpty

Sat on a wall.

Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful holiday at a friend of Anna's moms. It was the most relaxing day I have had in a long time. The food was delicious, the house was beautiful, the boys were having a blast with their cousins and all was well. I am grateful.

Magic....continued

I was just reading other blog posts and of course I opened this one, from a blog called 37 days.
The post was about magic. Wasn't I just writing about magic last night?

Here is part of it:

It got me to thinking about magic.
Where does real magic come from? You must read what one mother wrote about this, in a letter to her son who had figured out that the Tooth Fairy wasn't  "real." It is one of the most beautiful things I've read in a long, long while. While we believe you either believe or don't believe, here's one mother who believes there is a magical, third way.
Here's an excerpt from that post by Liz Emmett-Mattox, a letter she wrote her son:

"Dear AJ,

Today you crossed one of the many bridges on the journey from the world of the child to the world of the adult. You have found out that magic sometimes comes through ordinary people.
This is an important discovery, but please do not think that you have learned all there is about magic. Crossing this bridge means that you are ready to begin to apprentice a lifelong study of the true nature of magic.
What you need to know now is that some people who cross this bridge think that magic doesn’t exist at all. They become skeptical. This is a danger you will have to watch out for.
The second thing to know is that you can now make magic. Learning to do this will give you and those around you great joy.
Now that you have crossed this bridge, you may have to look a bit harder to find the magic in the world, but know this: those who don’t believe in magic will never find it, while those who look and expect to see magic will find it everywhere."

Go here to read the whole post.


"...you can now make magic. Learning to do this will give you and those around you great joy."

"Those who look and expect to see magic will find it everywhere."

Wow. That, my friends, is real magic.


Let magic flow through you, my (extra)ordinary friends.

My thanks to Santa. And to Liz Emmett-Mattox for that beautiful post about magic.

Magic sometimes comes through ordinary people.

Be ordinary. Be magic.

Good Advice

Could it be this simple?

ROAR

Wake UP!

So, Anna and I are in a sort of mid-life crisis. Maybe you could call it a 5 year wake up call. Anders is almost five now and we are hobbling along. Really, hobbling.
You'd think from the photo's that it's been smooth sailing, but I am here to say it distinctly and with no doubt- we are hobbling.

Parenting is hard work.
Working full time with two young children is really hard work.
Doing the laundry, cleaning the bathrooms, making a meal, changing a diaper, feels like an endless circle game.
Trying to respond appropriately to a whiny child, an obstinate child, a non-listening child feels difficult at best.
Figuring out how to have a life that holds magic is impossible these days.

I recently attended the memorial service of a very old friend, my best friends' mother in fact, and I had my first wake up call. At the memorial, her husband of 40 years read love poems he had written for her over the course of their marriage. The poems were stunningly beautiful. The poems were heartbreaking. I wept. Their love was brilliant but human; full of hardship but also magic.

It made me think about my life. The life I lead right now that is void of magic.

I feel as if I am living in the trenches...no time for magic, no time for love.
It feels like it is killing me.
I moved to Vermont specifically for big love.
And here I am nearly 15 years later finding myself struggling for air. It's weird, because I have exactly what I have ever wanted....2 beautiful children, a great partner, a home, a good career and yet I feel lost. Why?

I think an internal eye of mine started looking around for something deeper.
Maybe even role models.
Parents who have a family and have managed to keep the magic intact.
Hardship and magic together...married. Not just hardship.

I found a few other mom blogs that I guess I have used as an arrow.
I can't really even say that.
It's more that when I read some of them it touches the part of me that feels, that knows something, that can identify magic and poetry. And it feels like it is beginning to loosen up a part of me that feels so terribly stuck.

That is where I heard WAKE up for the second time. I reached out for help. The blog This and That www.vickihoefle.wordpress.com had a posting on October 27 that was amazing. It was as beautiful as Al's love poems to his wife were, except this was a letter to a daughter.
Vicki told me - Wake up!
Pay attention. Practice being in the moment. Every day....every single day.
Thank God.

I have had a hard time admitting that I am really struggling. I think I feel ashamed, embarrassed and certainly ungrateful. Maybe it's that I am just too damn proud. But really, I need some good help. So anyone who can send me a wake up call is welcome. Feel free to bring it on!

Sleeping Beauties IV

See the blog for Sleeping Beauties I, II, and III.

A Horse in the Kitchen

I signed Anders up for his first painting class and quite honestly I had no idea how it would go. I just waited to see what developed for him. He painted an amazing fire breathing dragon, a pink owl, and this...a horse in the kitchen.

Lovely Photo

Anders teacher took this photo of Anders at pre-school. They had just been playing in a pile of leaves.

My boys and their Grandpa

My mom and dad are visiting. This means the boys get to enjoy some much loved time with their grandparents. The highlight of this evening was Grandpa playing a hide and seek game with the boys. This of course got a little rowdy when my dad turned the game into a blend of hide and seek-tickle-and monster. You should have heard them laughing! Dad also played a little (and I do mean little, he and Jakob were only about 8 inches apart) game of catch with Kuba, and Grandma and Anders played GO FISH. I of course, watched all this from my regular Friday night fog of exhaustion....Friday evenings are not the high point of my long work week!
Luckily, I was able to film/photoraph/and truly appreciate!

Anders, Photographer

Anders has been using the camera lately. This is a collection of photo's he took the other day when he was out on a hike.

Rotten Porch - GONE!

Completely torn off...today....all of it.
Hallelujah!!
And soon a newly designed front porch, with a larger and insulated entry, and also a pantry off the kitchen, will grace our lives!

Look Whooo's TWO!

We had Kuba's second birthday party this weekend, and it was an owl party indeed! We were lucky enough to have a visit from a very real, very beautiful barred owl. Anna questioned me a bit on my idea to have an owl, and I said...some people get bouncy castles, some hire clowns....we get to have a live owl and donate the money to a local raptor organization that rescues birds of prey. The organization is called Outreach for Earth Stewardship and it's very small, very local and very cool. It was smooth sailing after that. If you want to check them out their website is http://www.ofes.org/

We even had a delicious owl cake made by the best cake baker around, Aunt Sandy.
It was so much fun pulling it all together....the kids decorated owl masks, and stamped the front of a little owl book I put together for them with poems and owl songs. Here are a few of the items from the book....

Owl in the Tree
(Sung To: Skip to my Lou)

Owl in the tree says, who, who, who
Owl in the tree says, who, who, who
Owl in the tree says, who, who, who
Who, who, are you?

Owl Song
(Sung To: I'm a little Teapot)

I'm a great big owl, as you can see
I live high up in a tree.
All the other birds wake me up when they play,
Because I like to sleep in the day

Mr. Owl
Late at night when you're in bed,
Mr. Owl perks up his head.
He looks left and he looks right,
In the dark all through the night.
Hear him hoot when you're in bed,
When Mr. Owl perks up his head.

The Owl
I saw an owl.
He sat in a tree.
He opened one eye.
He winked at me.

The Dragon and The Owl

Here are two of the best halloween trick or treaters in the whole wide world! We made both of the boys costumes this year, and it was so much fun. Anders was a magnificent dragon, and our little owl was quite a hoot too!

Look Out Julia!

Look Out Julia!!! We'll just leave it at that.

Late Night Chatter

Anders fell asleep first, and there I was with a chatter bug. Kuba just wasn't tired enough, or perhaps he was overtired. Either way, he was awake enough that I decided to just have a conversation with him or at least direct his conversation.  I asked him what were his favorite things to eat...and he responded without hesitation...pizza, kiwi, yogurt and cookies. Then I asked him about his pre-school, and finally I asked him about his brother. At that moment, he sat up, and with eyes wide open proclaimed "Anders is awesome."

In our Garden

A few snapshots of Kuba in the garden...

Anders and the Digital Camera

Anders was fascinated with the digital camera the other evening, and so I turned him loose with it. Here is a photo collage of our home from his perspective. He was so totally captivated by the entire experience. I think we need to find a camera just for him. (If you click on the photo, I think you can get a zoomed in view.)

Back to School

It's that time of year again!
Anders begins his new pre-school next week,and I have been back for almost 2 full weeks now. Tomorrow is my first day with kids though; the previous time was spent in a 4 day graduate class and in pre-service work at both schools.

OH, and for those of you who I haven't spoken to, I recently accepted a new half- time position at an elementary school a half mile from my house. This means I am now working at 2 different schools, switching back and forth each day.

I am the new "Integrated Arts Coach" and so far it has been great. I am not teaching, but working with the school and the staff to help fully integrate the arts into their curriculum. I think that is a little bit exciting, don't you think? And, it fits my personality so well. I am really excited about it.

More on this later...
And more on Anders transition into his new school. Kuba will be joining him there in a couple of months. We are quite excited about this.

Paths

I forgot that I snapped these shots of the boys when we were out on a hike. I thought they were too good to miss the blog.
As you might have guessed, the boardwalk was especially fun.

Artist's Date II

It couldn't have been a better birthday gift! My second outing was with my friend Jeneane at Battery Park. She gave me a one on one lesson in the art of painting with pastel. She is a master and of course it was a total blast!! Here we are working hard!