Snow Day

Yesterday we had our first real snow of the year, and I enjoyed my oatmeal out on the deck while I supervised the kids out plowing the driveway.





Later we tried some grass sledding (note to self, mow before it snows)



and then went inside to put up Christmas decorations because M had been begging to decorate all weekend. The kids attacked the boxes, tearing out tissue paper and dropping and breaking things, as I frantically tried to keep the tree ornaments separate from the not-tree decorations. After we got all of the snowmen and reindeer on the shelves and the boxes put away, M said, "That wasn't as much fun as I thought it was going to be." Where did I get a six-year-old teenager? But then later, after Charie Brown's Christmas,



when E and Z were napping and I started working on a quilt I'm making for a gift, he decided he wanted to sew and spent the afternoon embroidering a SuperFriends logo.

I always thought holidays would regain their old magic after I had kids, but instead they have become more stressful and anxiety-provoking. I spend way too much time obsessing about how holiday gift-giving relates to our consumer culture, destruction of natural resources and climate change. And I worry about what to get people, and if I spent enough money or too much? And will they like it? And how do I teach my kids to enjoy the non-material aspects of the season? M keeps saying he wants to fall asleep and not wake up until December 25. I then remind him of all the fun he would miss out on: going out into the woods to cut a tree, and then decorate it; baking Christmas cookies; reading all the Christams books (I wrap 24 of them up and we open and read one each day of Advent); watching Charlie Brown's Christmas and The Grinch; listening to Christmas music. And now I have a new favorite can't-put-a-price-on-it activity, singing "Jing bug! Oh! Jing bug!" with E and Z.