Easter 2010

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Happy Birthday to my Valentine

Valentine's Day was my Pete's 30th Birthday!!! We didn't do to much this year... we were both too exhausted (as you can tell by our faces in the photo below).... but we did get together with our dear friends the Shorters for a delicious dinner and, of course, cake!

Little Mr. McCutie, Ian, was captivated by Liam. It was too cute.

Happy Birthday, my Sweet, I love you so very much!!!!!

New Years and Epiphany/Three Kings Day

New Year's for us this year was kept pretty darn simple. We had some yummy (although store bought) pastries for breakfast, switched the calendars and Around The Year book over, lounged around and then Rory and I made this special candle. We will light it on the first day of each month, and then next January, use it to light the new New Year's Candle. The idea being that we will watch it grow smaller as the year progresses. We used clay punches to punch shapes from beeswax decorating wax strips and Aurora chose where to place them on the candle. Easy peasy and lots of fun.

And, today we celebrated Epiphany/ Three Kings Day for the first time. We took down all our Christmas decorations last night, and Aurora was none too happy to see the tree go... It helped that we had this small celebration to look forward to today. Given that I am ahem rather large with child at the moment (and contracting regularly, but not enough, apparently... whole other story), this celebration was kept pretty small as well. I had originally wanted to at least bake a tree kings cake to have for breakfast this morning... but last night, rather uncharacteristically, I actually recognized my limits and decided to skip any baking/further crafting, and stick to a paper crown and the three small gifts we had chosen for Aurora. And that was truly plenty for this year. It was a very sweet morning.

Glimpses of Christmas

I'll share more pictures of the days leading up to Christmas soon.... The baby landed me on complete bed rest the last two weeks and I didn't have an easy way of getting pics onto Pete's laptop to post. But.... I'm nearly full term now and off bed rest, so there are a lot of catch up posts to do!

We had a wonderful Christmas---- it was very much a magical time for Aurora.

More pics to be found here

Advent Day Nine

Cranberry and Popcorn Garland!

A note about the lately sparse Advent posting: Santa really needs to bring some more memory for this old computer!!!! The computer has been acting up and so slow lately that I've dreaded getting on to post... because it seems that everything just takes so, so long right now. Hopefully this is something that can be fixed soon. I've also decided that really only the Advent activities and outings are post worthy, so I've left out the days that Aurora has just found a small suprise in her Advent cone... Christmas window clings, lip balm, her scarf etc....

So, anyway, our Garland: took way longer than I expected! I need to make more still for the rest of the tree. It's also much more beautiful on the tree than I had expected, so I'm thinking this is something that will become a tradition for us. I was surprised at how well Aurora did with the needle... she had a few pokes, but then quickly learned herself how to hold it more carefully and take her time. She did many, many cranberries all by herself!

Advent Catch Up

Snowflakes and St Nicholas Day!!

The snowflakes went better thank I had expected. Aurora's really into cutting with scissors right now, so I knew she'd enjoy it, but wasn't sure how much she'd actually be able to do. I had a few pieces of already folded paper, with a few preliminary cuts in them, and her scissors waiting for her in her Advent Cone for the day. She did really well.... as you can see from the flurry of snowflakes adorning our door!

St. Nicholas Day was very excitedly celebrated here for the first time last weekend. I used this very simple story to introduce him to Aurora and also painted a little peg person to look like St. Nicholas (which, I'm finding I never took a picture of!) to find the morning in her Advent cone the morning of St. Nicholas Eve. That evening, she set out her shoe with some carrots for St. Nick's horse and a note for St. Nicholas. She was very set in her mind that she needed to place her shoe at the kitchen door, and then St. Nicholas would move it to outside her bedroom door when he came. The note details these instructions for the good Saint. She also drew a picture of a fishing pole for him ;)
The next morning she found that St. Nicholas had come and left her a beautiful note on rainbow paper, a small bag of chocolate coins and a special ornament for the tree. She thought the coins were quarters for the laundry and was shocked (then delighted) when I showed her they were actually chocolate. Her special ornament for this year were ballet slippers to commemorate her first trip to the ballet.

Advent, Day Three

Downtown Tree Lighting!

Lots of fun and a very magical moment for Aurora when finally lit the tree.... I wasn't able to capture it with the camera, but her expression was priceless.

Advent, Day Two

Hot Chocolate and Christmas Stories before bed!

This equals one happy girl. Extra fancy hot chocolate with crushed candy canes and whipped cream and her first time hearing The Polar Express. Aurora was saying something about trains in her sleep last night... I think the book had quite an impact on her!

Advent, Day One

Planting Paperwhites!!

Aurora was thrilled to take down the first cone and find the bulbs inside... she loves to garden. Hopefully, we'll have some blooms for Christmas....

Thanksgiving and the Ballet

Just a quick recap of Thanksgiving.... we had the great pleasure of celebrating with our friends the Shorters, who live in our building. Maddie and Aurora are such, such good friends (and we like Clay, Jessica and Ian, too!).... so, of course, it was an awesome time. We had lots of delicious foods, wonderful pie and great company. After dinner, the girls played and Pete and I tried our hand at playing the Nintendo Wii for the first time.... it was a lot of fun! (kinda makes me wish we had a TV). Oh, and Aurora actuallly ate the Turkey this year!!! Success!
Then on Sunday we were off to the Ballet. The New England Ballet does this wonderful preformance for Littles called the Sugar Plum Party. It was a shortened preformance of The Nutcracker, (minus the scary rat army, but still with all the beautifully costumed dancers), a picture with a ballerina, a craft and refreshments. I very highly reccomend it for next year for anybody local. It was really, really well done. The ballerinas even came down to help the children with their craft project.

Aurora outside the theatre with the crown she made.

Preparations

Our Advent celebration begins tomorrow!! Aurora is super excited. It's looking to be a very, very busy month.... let's just hope this little guys stays inside me until after Christmas;)
We'll be adding some new celebrations this time around.... St. Nicholas Day, Santa Lucia, and Epiphany/Three Kings Day... but to start is our Advent Calendar which Aurora and I made out of cones of Christmas scrapbooking paper we had on hand. 24 cones pinned in two rows along the wall.... each cone will hold a small surprise or project or outing to do together.

Leftover scraps from the cones became refrigerator tangrams.... which have gotten much use already.

And, despite it still really only being Autumn, we started setting up our Winter Nature Table today.

Our Martinmas Lanterns

Aurora enjoyed this so much! Martinmas will now have a permanent place on our holiday calendar, I believe. And it has inspired me to to take a closer look at some of the lesser known/celebrated holidays and festivals- next up would be Santa Lucia in December.

working on her lantern (she loved the gluestick!)

a very, very happy girl

out for our lantern walk

back home, the lantern aglow on our Nature Table

St. Martin was a noble military officer who sliced his cloak in half and gave one half to a freezing beggar. He later dreamed that the beggar had been Christ, or a messenger of Christ, and was moved to give up his Military career for a life of peace and service, in God's name.

Next year, I plan to have Aurora help me gather up her warm winter clothes that she's outgrown and help me deliver them to shelter or donation center. Another way people celebrate is by having a meal in which each person has a roll or muffin that they then slice in half and offer half to the person sitting next to them.... we'll plan to do this, too.

WIP Wednesday and Martinmas

Happy Martinmas everyone! This is the first year we will be celebrating.... Aurora and I will be making a lantern this afternoon (she is very excited about this) and then joining some special friends for a twilight Lantern walk. I'll make sure to share the pics tomorrow.

I'll be sharing some of the stories/poems with her and following the lantern tutorial found over at Our Little Nature Nest.

Yesterday, Rory and I went to Ikea after preschool for lunch and to pick up a package of tealights for our lantern making. You should have seen my little shopper- she took the task of picking out the perfect candle very seriously and carefully sniffed each and every candle Ikea sells. It took quite a while, but she finally decided on some berry scented tea lights. Since she is so very excited about the candles, I think we will also make a table lantern of a glass jar with tissue paper glued on to have on our dining table.

And.... the incessant knitting continues (hmm... could I be nesting?!)

I've got a sweet little baby gift on the needles now for a little guy who should be making his appearance any day now (not mine!).... but since his parents occasionally check this blog--- no pics right now....

But Aurora's sweater shirt vest thing is done- and she loves it!

Halloween and Knitting

Halloween first... not too many pictures here...it's surprisingly (or maybe not so) difficult to get a three year old to stay in one place long enough for pics on Halloween. But, I did get one of her helping to carve the pumpkin:


And one with Maddie next to the jack-o-lantern just as they were about to set off trick-or-treating. Aurora was Minnie Mouse and Maddie was a beautiful princess. Rory, as you can see, was more interested in trying to rip open some candy than look at the camera.... oh, well.

And, now knitting.... I finished two hats for the babe... both with the pattern from Rory's hat... I love this pattern, it offers such great coverage around the ears and back of neck. This one was done in Malabrigo Merino in Continental and was left over from a hat I made for myself, but have yet to photograph....
and this one was done with NaturallyCaron Spa, one strand each of Ocean Spray and Green Sheen held double. The yarn is an acrylic/bamboo blend, mostly acrylic though. I don't usually like to knit with that much plastic content, but the yarn was there in my stash, pretty, soft and my fingers were needing something to knit... I made this one without the loop on the top, to see how'd it look.... I prefer the loop, I think
All this knitting for the baby has finally got Aurora interested in me knitting for her- This is my current WIP- the Girl's Cap Sleeved Shirt which is also being knit in the same bamboo yarn as above, should be easy to wash at least. I've finished more since the pic, but probably still have a good 2-3 inches to go before it's done.

~Sorry about the horrible picture... Rory's not even all in the frame- but at least she's smiling for once~