Boreal Witch

Yule is one of my favorite holidays. Actually, we have so many traditions that all of December seems like one big holiday.

Since we are living in an apartment again, we had to do things differently this year.

We don't have a fireplace, so our Yule celebration didn't include a bonfire this year.  We had some  sparklers that I picked up from a garage sale this summer and lit those instead. The boys had a blast. We also had a delicious dinner with the most amazing salad I've ever eaten (recipe here) and a caramel/butterscotch fondue for dessert. Sadly, Robinson was sick with strep throat and was unable to enjoy the food as much as he would have if he was well.

Our lease says that we cannot have a real Christmas tree, so we bought a large wreath to hang all of our ornaments and lights on. It was a bit crowded, but the boys enjoyed the novelty.

Their ornaments turned out great, too. Arthur chose to commemorate his holiday program; Balin, his time on the farm, Robinson, his journey down the Al-Can; and I chose to celebrate my new-found love of biking. 


We did, however, continue a few of our favorite traditions. Our gingerbread "house" this year was actually an AT-AT. There's a Lego Luke Skywalker on top (that was Arthur's idea). We had a tough time with it. Its first and second heads were too heavy and broke off, so we decided that this would be one of the AT-ATs that had fallen in the battle on Hoth. It took forever to finish this thing (mostly because of the combination of winter break and Robinson's illness), but the boys had a blast decorating it. Next year we're going to shoot for an X-Wing!

My friend Andrea made a special trip to visit us. She went to UPS with me and lived just down the hall freshman year. She's in Minnesota now. We haven't seen each other in (I kid you not) about twelve years, so it was wonderful to catch up. We also caught each other up on some of the things other UPS friends have been doing and worked on some wedding presents for our friend Rin, who got married February. There are plans in the works to visit her this summer...the boys were utterly fascinated and smitten by her. Isn't it funny how you can get together with old friends and everything's just like old times?

Our families are very generous and the boys received all kinds of gifts: toys, books, clothes. They spent most of the morning putting their new Lego kits together, with Arthur helping Balin.

I'm not sure where Balin's interest in fire fighters came from (he was a fireman for Halloween - maybe that's part of it?), but he got a lot of fire fighting gifts, including two pairs of pajamas and the Lego firetruck. (I didn't notice until now, but he's also sporting his fire truck t-shirt!)

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday!

Blessed be.