Sprinkles

 The shadows grow long early these winter days; it is noticeably dark when we rise in the morning. We still long for snow...

 Inside we are keeping busy, making making making...

 Playing, whirling, dancing...

 And just bein' our freaky selves...

 This is a common scene these days  - pajamas until the afternoon, keeping warm and trying to stay or get healthy. It's Dan's turn with the crud...he is so good-natured about it, and revives himself for part of every day to play bananagrams, read a book, watch Bugs Bunny, eat a meal...whatever we're doing, which I so appreciate. Yesterday he used his couple of mid-day energetic hours to take Ani to go get a tree while Eliza and I started on sugar cookies for a Christmas party.  We're thinking this happened last year as well, with him feeling less than whole but heroically going to find us a tree anyway.

 We don't bake much around here, so these times stand out like the sprinkles on the cookies!  Our neighbor stopped by after school, just in time to get her fingers into it all with the girls.

 A dear friend and old roommate of mine and I used to make elaborate frosted sugar cookies for Solstice, and I seem to recall that my dad and I made them together one year as well, each time taking hours and hours as we decorated in great color and detail.  It was good for me to stay way out of the decorating and let the girls take charge, mixing the colors, deciding how things were to be done, getting it all as messy and lovely as they wished. My job was to simply provide more cookies...

 Brilliant. And delicious. The Christmas Party was wonderful - a house aglow with lights, wood-fire burning, table laden with sweets, snowflakes hanging from the ceiling, friends so happy to see us, 16 of us around a table for a game...and after the dark, late drive home, we saw lights twinkling on our tree, a magical present from the sick papa.  It's finally starting to feel like a celebration around here!