It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

It was a bit of a stretch finding a tree this year on our property, but we at least found a part of a tree!  Jason, Kali and Alida scouted it out yesterday and we were able to get it cut and inside before the most recent snow.  Last evening we decorated it and I'm not sure Alida stopped chattering once.  This was a very exciting activity.  The ornaments are going to play musical branches I believe this year due to her intense fascination with the tree and all the fun things hanging from it (that seem to wish to be moved around from time to time)! 



But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself!  It seems that three weeks between blog posts means much has transpired.  In this case it included a fun trip to Pa. for Thanksgiving with the Benners, a rescheduled fall party which included eating donuts off strings and bobbing for apples, and a wonderful visit from cousins.  Here you can see Jason beating me in our apple bobbing competition.  Not only did he succeed in getting his apple before me, he was substantially dryer!

The girls had so much fun having cousins around this past weekend.  We were grateful the bad weather held off long enough that most of Saturday was spent outside playing in leaves, at the swingset, on the tire swing, etc...  The goats thoroughly enjoyed the visit too as they got taken on multiple walks.

The other thing that happened with November coming to a close was that Kali successfully completed her story that she set out to write for National Novel Writing Month. She participated in the youth Nanowrimo program, after being encouraged and inspired by her uncle Jonas.  It felt like a complete transformation to see her go from hardly ever writing more than a word or two to soaring above her 3000 word goal with her story, "The Land of the Rainbow."  We are eager for the sequel to come out.  Here she is submitting her story - she was not about to forget the deadline and spent hours working on editing it while we were in PA for Thanksgiving.  Yes, we are proud of her and were quite impressed with her stick-to-it-ness on this one!

She has pretty much been taking a break from writing in December, and it's a good thing she is done her story because snow has arrived!  She was out in it for over 3 hours straight today, about 2 of those alone.   By the time Alida woke from her afternoon nap and we got outside her snowman was already constructed and she had taken many runs down the hill on her sled, making a great path for us to follow.  The brush piles at the bottom of the hill were perfect for catching us and most of the time Kali would fly down the hill, sail up into the air and land right on the brush pile.  Of course that never happened when I was at the bottom ready to document it, but here she is on one of her runs.



Here's  a few more pictures of the girls enjoying the outdoors, both pre and post-snow. 

I think my time at the computer is about up. Jason is finishing up rehabbing our back door, the girls were coloring but Alida is ready for my full attention (and I think some more food in her belly), and it is about time to get a fire going in the wood stove.  I imagine we'll be taste testing some more popcorn tonight (we are needing to eat a lot of popcorn to decide what to favor for seed for next year) and it is just the right weather for a hot drink and a game!

We are having a lot of fun eating delicious home grown popcorn and new this year grinding our own cornmeal!  Here the girls and I are making tortillas with homegrown and ground red cornmeal.  Tomorrow I'm going to try cornbread made with 100% cornmeal from our harvest this year.  Fun!  I've also put it in rolls and used it making pizza so far.  If we get into it in a much bigger way our little hand grinder won't cut it.  But it works for now!

Until next time...