February poem

I read this poem while I was in college. I loved it and always remembered it. I googled it a few months ago and thought I would share it.




Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden


Sundays too my father got up early
And put his clothes on in the blueback cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm,
he'd call,and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?

January poem

No sky
no earth--butstill
snowflakes fall

by Hashin

Christmas Day

Blogging is great because it's like scrapbooking without having to pull all that stuff out.

Anyway--CHRISTMAS DAY! Snow, snow, snow and more snow. A lovely, peaceful, quiet day, just the way I like them! Happy kids, spoiled a little but not too much. Just our family and some phone calls ALL day long.

Christmas Eve

Bouche de noel at MJ's house and some last minute shopping. Darn it, I didn't get a picture of the cake. I did get a new camera for Christmas which I opened early supposedly so that I could take pictures Christmas Eve. We watched Prince Caspian that evening and there was way too much fighting for both me and Sage. At least too much for a Christmas Eve movie. Kids in bed by 10:00, can you believe it?

pre- christmas activity #4 Gardner village

Holy cow, are we done having fun yet?

It is my tradition to take the kids to Gardner Village. We look at the elves, buy a Christmas ornament, oogle the candy at the Candy Shoppe and eat dinner at Archibald's. I love it when we make it there on a day that's not too busy. This year was perfect.

The first time we went Sage was about 4 and she was so cute about it. It was absolutely magical to her. Those elves were REAL and she knew them and they were her friends and she had names for them and stories about them. It was hilarious!

I love Cash's fashion statement with the headband in these pictures. He was pretty serious about checking the naughty and nice list to see wich one he was on. I assured him that it wasn't a comprehensive list and he was relieved.

My favorite part is the furniture store right next to the resaurant. If I could choose a house I think it would be that furniture store. I just wouldn't want to have to pay the heating bill--drafty big building.

pre- christmas activity #3 Robin's house

Okay I need to figure out how to do a picture collage so that I do not have just endless lines of photos. Here Diane these are for you...

My boys slept at Robin's house Sunday night. We spent most of Monday just hanging out, watching SNL top 100 moments (of which we missed the top ten or so, darn it!) and a Christmas Story. Not to mention endless hours of computer and video game time. Then we had a Christmas dinner with ham and Robin's famous sweet potatoes. YUM.

Wish you were here Richman family!

pre- christmas activity #2 Zoo lights

This was so fun we will do it again next year. We slid in through the zoo gates just after 8:00 so we had only an hour to walk around. The lights are cool and a little more exciting that temple square. We didn't see too many animals but it was fun to see the ones that we did in a different setting ( they were not all hot and lazy and hiding from the sun.) The coolest by far was the sloth (see top picture). If I had the new camera that I got for Christmas I could have taken a better picture of him. He was in the snake house in the middle part that was roped off for the winter. He was literally 2 feet in front of us with no cage and no glass. It looked like he had accidentally come down out of the trees and was stuck on the rope fence. He kept trying to get back up there and couldn't quite figure it out. We watched him for probably 15 minutes and could have stayed longer if we had the time. So cool! Then right outside of the snake house the wolf was howling on the ridge of the hill.

Isn't Keagan just about as cute as they come?