Weekend Things--Winter Things

This weekend involved a lot of kitchen time.

A few times a year, I take all the dishes down off the open shelves and wash away the months of accumulated dust. Christmastime seems like a good time to do that.

When I put them back, I arranged all the reds and greens on the big center shelves for a festive look. None of the menfolk in my house were impressed. 

Z and I made some concoctions for Christmas presents.

And E helped cut out cookies.

Saturday afternoon we headed over to the pond down the road to skate before the snow came.

About two inches of dry, powdery snow covered most of the pond, which made it kind of easy to skate on (or at least easy to not fall down on).

But the boys preferred racing around a little rink of bare ice at one end.

Sunday morning, the real snow came.

Lucia buns for breakfast.

And fondue for lunch (because Catherine Newman).

E and Z made sled runs and dug tunnels, and in the afternoon, we drove through the snow to The Nutcracker. I read Harry Potter out loud on the drive, both ways, pausing only to look up so I could backseat drive and keep C on the road.

We've had some early and fierce cold already. It's amazing how cold becomes relative. A couple of weeks ago, 27 degrees felt unbearable, but today 15 felt downright balmy after yesterday's negative 13.9.

Also this:

I finally, finally finished my thesis. One-hundred-fifty pages: nine stories and a preface, plus my 90-page third-semester project. Very exciting to see it all printed up and fancy. I haven't mailed it yet because I was still waiting for one last piece, but it should be in the post tomorrow morning and then I will sigh a big sigh of relief.

(Also, I was looking to see if I'd ever posted the Lucia bun recipe I use before, and I found this post from one year ago today, about living life to the fullest because of, well, all the crap that goes on in this world. It's nice to be reminded of this (and not so nice to need to be reminded so often).