Good morning, post-Christmas world! I speak for myself, of course. My Polish friends are just at the start of their days of Christmas. Even my older girl still has some Christmas moments with other family members before her. But for me, the holiday is over and my eyes are turned toward the rest of this month and the beginning of the New Year.
Outside, it's still a bit nippy, but not for long. By tomorrow, we'll be above freezing. And I have to say, as slush will replace the crunch that I so love when I step out on drifts of snow, I will miss just a little this winter chill. I mean, keep the polar vortex to yourselves up there in the northern parts of the earth. But a gentler version of winter frost is lovely. I look forward to its return next week!
I have a bit of a game with the animals today. Pancake, the seventh stray that we haven't yet domesticated nor have we even trapped her for spaying purposes, comes crying this morning. So I set myself the goal of corralling as many of our six cats as I can, and hustling them inside, so that I can feed Pancake underneath one of the cars. She's come to identify that spot as a place where she might get some food. All this takes forever. Cat chores can be easy, unless some outsider shows up and throws off the rhythm of farmette life.
(Dance and Friendly Tiger, watching for signs of Pancake.)
Now, let's review the day in terms of its meals. First, the quiet one that starts the day:
1. Breakfast
What to have today? Still working on the panettone, which by now has graduated in our eyes to really really good!
[As I wait for Ed, I study my new cookbook. My daughters and I are all great cookbook readers. We carefully pick new ones for the year and gift them as Christmas presents. Ed claims there's nothing you can't cook that can't be found on the internet, but this quite misses the point. We read cookbooks to search out ideas and to learn new approaches to food. Yes, sometimes there will be a recipe worth trying, but most of our reading isn't about just finding a good recipe.]
I was supposed to meet the two young families at the Black Earth Children's Museum, but at the last minute I bowed out of that one. Instead, Ed and I took down the tree -- our beautiful, most perfect (if just a tad crooked) tree that held on to its needles magnificently for more than a month!
Still, the satisfaction of putting things away and picking up all the post holiday debris is huge and this year Ed partners up with me to get the job done swiftly, efficiently.
2. Lunch
I meet up with the young families (minus one working father) at Longtable -- a local place that sees itself as a "beer cafe," though we have neither beer nor coffee there today. Just lunch. It's typical pub style foods but well prepared and yes, they do have long tables!
(the two plaid girls...)
(a boy who loves to connect the numbers...)
(a boy who loves to wiggle!)
(she starts a trend among the older kids today of conducting surveys. for most of our time together we all get asked -- which do you prefer, X or Y? And then the numbers are tallied and the winning choices are announced. again and again. many surveys!)
(the long table...)
(time to head out! the plaid girls get going...)
3. Dinner
We eat at Lucille's off the Square. This is super nostalgic for us, because the last time we were there was for a (pre)holiday dinner in 2019. The two youngest kids weren't born yet. Snowdrop had bangs, Sparrow hadn't yet had a haircut, and Primrose was just a year and a half! And notably, it was just a few months before the pandemic shut things down and changed so much for so many.
Lucille's is a place you'd go to for artisanal pizzas and craft cocktails. And for their holiday decorations which are wonderfully over the top.
Photos from our evening there this year: celebratory in the best of ways!
(leaving the farmette: careful, the herd is back!)
(beautiful crisp winter night...)
(oh! Look who is out on the Square! next to a very large snow bank...)
(inside now, taking it all in!)
(another very long table... )
("I like everything on the menu!")
(are we ready for some more surveys?)
(Juniper has no option on pig over work, or heart over diamond...)
(time to explore some of the decorations with the younger set...)
(the youngest of the young with the older me...)
(a boy who likes movement...)
It was a magnificent evening, capping a very fine day.
Holiday traditions are loved by all of us, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that perhaps they are loved by me especially much, and possibly more each year. You don't have the certainty that something wont drag you down or flip for you in the years to come and so you really appreciate the gift of having had a string of days where no one is sick or hurting or incapacitated for whatever reason. You see the smiles all around you and you know that they are genuine, and that we are so so fortunate to have had these days together. Surely this month, with its bumpy viruses and a few punches and knocks in the first half, turned out to give us a fabulous and worry free second half. How good is that!
Tomorrow I'm heading out. Not for long -- just a couple of days. More on that later. For now, let me bask in the glow that comes after a day with the gang of nine plus one. Total bliss.
with so much love...
