Noel

The wall in my kitchen directly across from the island is entirely painted in magnetic blackboard paint. Each season I change the picture. Sometimes it's a recipe, like this summer's lemonade recipe, or sometimes it's a couple of lines of Robert Frost, and this Christmas it's a skating Santa. The wall has provided hours of fun for the girls who draw their own pictures on the bottom half and play with their magnetic letters and puzzles.

Country Morning

I drove out to Hammond this morning to buy some stocking stuffers at the tack shop and met up with this on the road.

Christmas Cookie Fun

Last weekend I got out the sugar cookie and gingerbread dough I had in the freezer and let the girls go wild. I think the look on Caroline's face says it all.

The artisan at work

Sarah in her Christmas apron

Merry Christmas Everyone

The girls are 7 this year and still believe in Santa Claus, although Sarah is not too sure about those ‘helper Santas’ she sees in the malls. Mind you, we haven’t let them near a mall Santa since their JK Christmas field trip to the Cumberland Heritage Village museum, when Caroline told the Santa there not to bring her Mummy any more underwear. The previous Christmas she had been wondering why Santa gave Mummy so much underwear, and I told her I suspected that Santa thought Mummy needed lots of little bits of lace. Anyway, Caroline made sure she set Santa straight the next time she saw him. This of course was relayed back to me by the mothers who had volunteered to help that day. Santa obviously didn’t take the hint, as I received more lacey bits that year and Caroline was totally baffled. When our rector asked her after last year’s Christmas Eve service what she thought Mummy would get for Christmas, she just heaved an exasperated sigh, and said “Oh, probably more underwear.” It’s a wonder I can still show my face around this village.
Dodgy mall Santas or not, the girls still believe and both have already written their letters. Sarah is very concerned because she only realized after she mailed hers that she misspelled horse. Instead of asking Santa for a real horse, a white one if he can manage it, she asked for a real hose. She’s been going around for the past week, slapping her forehead and saying, “ I can’t believe I left out the R”. Meanwhile, I’m gift wrapping a length of rubber tubing. I understand she plans to name it Snowflake.
As for a horse with an R, I’ve explained that Santa has to check all requests for pets and other four-legged creatures (like the reindeer Caroline asked for) with Mummies and Daddies, and we don’t think she’s old enough to have her own horse quite yet. For one thing she has to be tall enough to saddle up by herself. I figure that alone ought to buy me at least 10 years. Besides, we’ve already given in to the dog lobby, so I think we’ve done our bit. Hopefully waking up Christmas morning and not finding a horse and reindeer stabled in the garage won’t be too much of a disappointment.
So as the weeks leading up to Christmas fill with wishes big and hay-eating, and small and lacey, the ‘helper’ Santas in our household work tirelessly to keep the magic alive while hoping to impress upon our two little letter writers that it’s not what you get that’s important. After I explained about the horse and reindeer thing, new letters were written. This time it wasn’t just a list of I wants, but a request to bring presents for everyone in the family, and one ends like this:
Thank you Santa,
p.s.: You may take the cookies home, and take a bag of them to share. We left stuff for the reindeer too.
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

Christmas Comes to the Village, IV

This Sunday was the Sunday School Christmas Pageant. For me this is really the start of Christmas. I love the home made set, the little shepherds clothed in bathrobes and tea towels, and of course the singing. The girls class recited a poem. Both Caroline and Sarah did beautifully, not a hint of stage fright. They've come a long way since the first year when they were 3 year old angels who were too scared to go on stage and ended up sitting it out on Mummy's lap.

For the second year in a row our intrepid Sunday School leader, Debbie has had to work around Hydro One's diabolically scheduled power outages. Bitter cold, snowfall, no electricity? No problem, it's times like these when the Village pulls together. The local electrical contractor supplied a portable generator so we were all cozy and warm. Villagers filled the church hall that morning to standing room-only capacity. This in spite of the fact that the majority of them woke up to a cold house with no running water (remember we're all on wells whose pumps need electricity to work). Still they all came. The children sang like the little angels they are, everyone stayed afterwards for a hearty potluck lunch, and the church ladies, as always ensured everything ran smoothly.

Merry Christmas.

The Joys of Dog Ownership, it's Going to be a Long Winter

Yes, walking the dog when it's -21C is a real treat. The weather turned very cold over the weekend and it's certainly been a challenge taking Poppy out for her twice daily walks. Especially since she's decided that it's much too cold outside to attend to her business. She just scampers through the snow trailing a frozen owner at the end of her leash until we give up and come home. Murray came back Sunday night with a good case of hypothermia and had to soak in a warm tub to defrost.

This picture is of me this morning. The blunked out little orphan Annie eyeballs are because my glasses were all frosted over. Brrrrrr

Saturday Gallery Opening

Sounds so sophisticated, doesn't it? The art certainly was. On Saturday we attended a group exhibit of up and coming young artists. Caroline's art class at the Ottawa School of Art had their end of term show. This fall the class focused on sculpture and collage and studied the work or Rodin, Cezanne, and Van Gogh, to name a few. Caroline's work drew rave reviews for it's non-linear abstraction and rejection of traditional representation of subject matter in favor of a tactile emotional response to the medium.

(I wasn't an art history major for nothing, you know.)

Oh the Weather Outside is Frightful...

But inside it's so delightful....because we have our own generator.

Yes, the day we're been waiting for, Hydro One's first "planned" power outage since we had the natural gas generator installed. They always do this maintenance work on a Sunday and for the second year in a row, they managed to schedule it on the same Sunday as the Sunday School Christmas pageant (coincidence or not?). It was also the coldest day of the year to date. We woke up at 6:30 to the sound of the generator kicking in and arrived at Sunday School having had a hot breakfast and showers, unlike the majority of the congregation. They had arranged for a portable generator so the pageant and potluck went ahead as per schedule, for which everyone was really thankful.

The outage that was to last until 10:00 stretched all day and into the evening. Eventually our phone lines went out as well. It wasn't until around 8:00 p.m. that power was restored. Unlike a lot of our neighbours, we managed beautifully - even if the installers forgot to hook up the lights in the kitchen. We lit some candles, plugged in a reading lamp and toasted the adventure with some champagne.