the squibix family blog

Not that everything was joy. While there was enough snow to cancel school here in town, it was mostly rain closer to the ocean so I had to go to work. The boys were torn between going to my parents' house, as they usually do on Mondays, and staying home to play with friends (with Mama, who was working from home for the morning). I ended up deciding for them, and nobody was happy. Yes, Harvey got to play with Jack; but he ended up in a neighborhood snowball fight and as I understand it both gave and received some unkind blows. And Zion was bitterly angry to see, as we drove towards Lexington, the snow changing to rain, and he showed his displeasure with some unkind blows on the back of my seat with his feet. Actually, I shouldn't say nobody was happy; Lijah was completely content.

When Harvey arrived Grandma took the boys sledding. She says their impressions were mixed, but judging by their level of tiredness this evening they must have had a least a couple good runs. The only exercise I got was shoveling—the snow better stick around long enough for me to have some fun in it!

On Friday we reprised the holiday with Leah's parents and brother. I was meant to bring corn bread, which was unfortunate because I'm not good at making corn bread and also because our oven stopped working briefly in the middle of the cooking. The delay meant I missed some playing and socializing time, but at least I wasn't late for dinner! I even got there in time to watch Leah's brother carve the turkey in the optimal scientific way, which was amazing. I should take lessons: I've never actually carved a turkey, but every time I try to cut up a chicken it's a disaster. This turkey, barbecued, was as tasty as it was well-carved. We got some of the leftovers too, and they were wonderful in sandwiches Saturday. I call this Thanksgiving a success.

Eggs and toast ordinary?! Here I thought I was doing pretty well to get a hot breakfast with scrambled or fried eggs on the table four or five mornings a week. I do agree with her on the cereal though—at least so far as cereal by itself is concerned. So what would she have extraordinary cooks prepare? Here's Aunt Hilda's breakfast that day: "fresh orange juice, hot buckwheat cakes with butter and apple jelly, and bacon." Sounds good to me. Does anyone have a good recipe for buckwheat cakes? How about a suggestion for getting the kids to try them?

Happily, Lijah is unendingly creative; and having learned better, I now just do my best to capture his stories as they emerge and get them down on paper for him. It turns out that when I do it creates a positive feedback loop: he's tickled to hear his own stories and wants to make more of them. Mostly so far he's just done one page and moved on, but this evening he was inspired by Harvey's working on a comic strip (at the dinner table, but whatever) to string together eight pages of material featuring Thor, the devil, Wiley Coyote, Nuliujuk, and more. Not to be outdone, Zion created his own eight-page book. More coherent, if less wildly original, it's a story about a meteor crashing to earth and releasing a cloud of battling Pokemon.

All this creativity took place between 6:30 and 7:45, which may be early evening for some people but is definitely the center of the bedtime hour for us. So that was delayed. Worse, writing time also kept anyone from doing their kitchen chores, so after I got everyone tucked in bed at around 8:30—Leah is out for the evening—I had to come down and start the dishes. But I think it was worth it. Stories are important. I can't wait to see what they think of next.

As I mentioned, we had our turn at hosting at yesterday's wreath-making event. I was out early in the morning shoveling off the new back deck (it doesn't matter that it's not quite finished, because I just left the snow on the unfinished part!) and clearing out the fireplace. It was lovely being out there in the sunshine with the fire crackling away (and smoking, but that can't be helped), and the wreaths came out great. It was super fun to see how different they were—big and small, neat and wild—depending on the patience and temperament of the creator. And all were well be-ribboned, thanks to a 70% off deal at Joanne Fabrics.

I made one on contract for Lijah, but I was running around too much to finish my own, the one I want to put on on the front of the house. Maybe next week will be calm enough for me to get back to it. I just need to get a little sleep first.

The winter weather was so beautiful that over the week I took almost a hundred and fifty pictures—more than I took in the whole month of November! (always a low month for photography, I find). Admittedly, 50 or 60 of them were burst mode pictures of the kids going off jumps on their sleds, but I also did my best to capture the winter's own artistry.

Sadly, today was warm and rainy and the considerable snowpack is melting away almost faster than it accumulated just a week ago. Oh, I hope more falls soon. As lovely as our yard and our town are all the time, they're even better under a blanket of white!

Yesterday evening Leah asked me what I was planning to cook, since she was going to Whole Foods and cook pick up what was necessary. When I said I had no idea she read me the sale items for inspiration, and we settled on a pork loin. What is a pork loin? I wasn't entirely sure, but it sounded like something that could feed a crowd. (It may surprise you to know that I have never cooked pork; lots of bacon and ham, but no pork.) After some confusion over recipes—it turns out pork loin and pork tenderloin are not at all the same thing!—I figured out basically what I should be doing; and despite my not having a meat thermometer, which was strongly recommended by most sources, it seemed easy enough.

Of course, making a roast seemed fancy enough that I needed some top quality sides to go with it! Mashed potatoes, sure (and I had to do them with the food mill since Lijah didn't care for the lumps last time). Roasted broccoli so we'd have something green. Then in my searching for pork recipes I came across one for butternut squash with maple syrup and sriracha; I'd been wanting a new way to do squash! So I thought I'd try that as well. And then, since I forgot to feed the sourdough starter yesterday, I had to make yeast rolls too.

I have to say, while I'm not sure about pork—my ethical considerations are particularly strong when it comes to pigs—the meal came out so good I might have to shell out real money more often to repeat the experience. Certainly, it was worth all the afternoon's work and stress. Too often I get into a rut, just cooking the things I know how to and buying the same ingredients again and again. Rice and beans mostly. Which would have been fine with one of the young visitors: that's what he asked for when he saw what we had on the table. You can't please everyone all the time. But the evening's meal sure pleased me!

Zion and Lijah very briefly played some of a board game, played with their friends' toys, and romped in the snow outside. Harvey was convinced to join a Monopoly game and did that for three hours, questioning his life choices towards the end. At least he was winning when they had to stop! (naturally, they weren't able to finish the game). And we all drank lots of hot chocolate—even better, hot chocolate covered in whipped cream and other chocolate—and ate cookies. There was even something called "liquid truffle", which is basically hot chocolate but more so. Since the chocolate was basically the purpose of the gathering we jumped right into that at 10:30, so needless to say the kids weren't super enthusiastic about their lunches. Hopefully I restored them to health with soup for supper.

It was awesome to have so many people come out for the event. I now have 11 families on the co-op email list, and there was one other family there today who's not on the list yet. So I've got to feel that our efforts to build a learning community are going pretty well! Now all we need to do is find out how we can afford to rent a space that'll fit all of us...

Which was perfect! Even better than having to talk to someone on the phone! And the surprise inspection removed any stress I might have had about sprucing things up, but not in a way that left evidence of last minute work that might suggest I had something to hide. I think about those things. Nope, we run a tight ship here, and even without any warning (well, besides the two months of letters and calls...) our coop was clean and presentable and full of happy hens who have free access to food and water.

Still, I do feel a little guilty about not having things together. So I just made a reminder in my calendar: in 11 months it'll be time to make that appointment. Do you think it'll work?

I had told the kids earlier in the week that we might be able to get it Friday or Saturday, which to Zion and Lijah at least meant definitely Friday as soon as our book club friends left in the afternoon. Zion especially was practically vibrating with excitement. Only when I said maybe Friday I had been thinking that Leah would be home in the afternoon, and also that our kitchen would not have been destroyed by 13 people having lunch in it and then five kids eight and under doing chemistry with baking soda, vinegar, and canola oil (oh why did I give them the oil?!). But Leah graciously told us to go ahead, and the boys promised to work super hard on cleaning up while I strung the lights, and also there's torrential rain in the forecast for tomorrow... so we made it happen.

And I'm glad. The boys did do a great job cleaning up, and they put up most of the ornaments (I managed to get a few of my favorites up) without breaking a single one (the lightbulb that they broke was an unrelated coincidence). And now there's a major item ticked off my invisible to-do list, and the Christmas spirit in the house has risen by at least 45%. That'll help me get some presents made, right?

It was actually lovely. On the way up, the precipitation was mostly snow and there weren't many cars on the streets—"walking in a winter wonderland" indeed. Then coming home it was wetter, but also downhill. Even Lijah is a pretty good walker now, though he does complain some and drags terribly when I'm holding his hand. And it's lot more exercise than being on the bikes, where we barely even have to pedal coming home. So totally worth it. But man is walking slow! It takes us maybe 12 minutes to bike to the library, and well under 10 coming home. Walking was 45 minutes each way. Good thing we don't have anything else to do!

The recipe is super simple: just a graham cracker crust (with sugar added), topped with chocolate chips, marshmallows, and nuts. You hardly need a recipe for that! And yet, I never thought of it myself despite always wishing I could get marshmallows in cookies somehow. The key, I think, is baking the crust for 10 minutes at 350° and then adding the other stuff before baking for 10-12 more minutes at 375°. I don't know if I'll get to any of the other recipes in the book before I have to return it—we've got a little bit going on this time of year—but it's already changed our lives. Rocky Road bars are a keeper!

Of course, the flip side of having a party my own way is bearing the brunt of the stress. Some families were ready for the walk and getting chilled while waiting for others to arrive and get their gear on. Some kids found the lunch table a little stressful (to be fair, it legit was—13 happy hungry kids can make some noise!). And everybody was cold at one time or another. I felt all that, since I wanted everyone to enjoy themselves, even with my idiosyncratic activity choices. It took me the rest of the day to recover. And that's with some significant help with the dishes from a couple of the parent attendees! Yes, it was lovely being in charge... and now I'm glad tomorrow's party is at someone else's house!

I'm not particularly extravagant, but doing Christmas right takes some money even at the best of times—so it's tough to think of adding another couple thousand dollars to our December bills. Leah is interested in fixing problems, so she's already scoping out the pre-Christmas sales at Lowes. I'm inclined to wait—"maybe it'll start working again!" I say. And in fact, in this instance it did. Once everyone had gone home we were talking about next steps; I turned it on to check one more time and it started right up. Leah cooked some tofu, and the pizza is in there now (a lot of good it'll do anyone at this point, but I didn't want to just throw away all that dough!). But it doesn't inspire confidence, having an oven that only works when it feels like it. I just wonder how much we're able to spend on confidence?

The festivities kicked off with Christmas Eve dinner at my parents' house. Because they accidentally bought a smaller tree than they usually get we could even eat in the dining room! Then we headed to church for dessert and ornament-making—oh, and a Christmas Eve service too.

I don't know that my planning and preparations were any better than in years past, but I did have fewer presents all around, which meant I didn't have to stay up late wrapping like I often need to. Instead I spent the time cleaning the kitchen, which Leah appreciates just as much. As well as not buying as much this year, we also eased off on the homemade gifts, but there were a couple. I managed some mustard.

Harvey and I also did some woodworking: I made a picture frame for Leah and Harvey created a Pokemon jigsaw puzzle for Zion.

Zion and Lijah made tiny clay bowls for Mama and Grandma, respectively, which are as beautiful and charming as they are impractical. Of course, the most important making of all was the traditional breakfast spread of eggs, bagels, salmon, and donuts laid out by Grandma and Grandpa. Oh, there was fruit too.

After breakfast we opened presents, which was quicker than usual because Grandma was also feeling relaxed about the gift-giving. So there was plenty of time to get started on building all those Lego sets! Building a deck with the new Pokemon cards will come later.

I hope everyone else's day was as pleasant... Merry Christmas!