Friday

All day long the messages kept coming: weather alert, winter advisory, expect some snow. It didn't seem threatening, but it was a constant pounding of the winter beat. I decide early on to stay indoors. Completely. No need to go out: the chickens are now on their own in the morning. And Snowdrop will be coming with her mom later. I needn't pick them up.

So we eat breakfast. We always eat breakfast. And each breakfast is reassuringly the same, or similar. And the flowers are there, as are the fruits and it feels warm.






Ah, here they come!






When it's just me, I reach for the camera often enough during the day. But today I'm quieter with it. Perhaps it's that we're all distracted by the holiday, by life, by the snow outside, by the colors, by each other.

(Snowdrop, playing with the colorful box I recently bought for her in Poland)







Dancing -- there's dancing.






Of course, we all must participate. Even the non-dancers among us.






And there's quiet time. Building structures, cities even, constructing landscapes that only an almost two year old could imagine.

And outside the snow falls. Not heavily, sometimes not at all, at other times prettily. With those fat flakes we love to admire from inside the warm kitchen space.






As evening rolls in, my daughter and I put in a DVD that she and her sister have seen every year of their childhood (and beyond) -- Christmas Eve on Sesame Street. Snowdrop has never really watched a show geared to her age level and so you could say this is a first for her.






(What's more fun -- the viewing of the movie, or the watching of Snowdrop taking in this holiday classic?)


























About halfway through, she has her fill.






She returns to the real world, though perhaps a bit transformed.

And outside, the snow falls and the lights twinkle...






...welcoming in a very beautiful holiday set of days.