Winter Break

The cute mushroom ornament I made with Ethan's kindergarten class using an acorn top, cotton swab and part of a twig.

The coyote ornament Ethan and I made in ceramics class

Ethan's best friend from school, Rosa.  Still playing outside, in the dark, after a day of skiing.

The beginnings of the snow cave

Leif likes skiing in very small doses.  Most of the time he prefers to stay home, and we don't try to push it.  He's learning a year earlier than Ethan did.  Justin asked him last Saturday if he wanted to go skiing and Leif replied "no, I'll go on Wednesday."

We had a very quiet and fun winter break.  It snowed soft, fluffy snow almost every day and at one point we had almost 3 feet in our yard.  We had purchased a turkey from a neighbor and stocked up on milk, and had lots of root vegetables in the basement so we didn't need to leave the house except to ski.  We skied to the trails from our house, which was great.   A few days before Christmas we found an engorged tick on Sequoia who, luckily, had been vaccinated for Lyme disease.  We pulled it out and preserved it in alcohol.  Ethan got a microscope for Christmas so of course we looked at the engorged tick under the microscope.  Ethan was delighted with how disgusting it looked.