Merry Christmas!

While other families read "Twas the Night Before Christmas" on Christmas Eve, at our house, we read "A Corgiville Christmas" by Tasha Tudor. Such a fun nostalgic tale about parties and merriment in the little town of Corgiville. And after the girls have gone to bed, I enjoy watching the video "Take Joy" .... also by Tasha Tudor and one of my all time favorites.

With lower gas prices and my brother Dan home from China, it was tempting to drive to Michigan to be with my family this Christmas. But the weather is always a big unknown, and there is nothing more stressful than driving around Chicago in a snowstorm (unless it's being stranded at O'hara Airport in a snowstorm!) I am sooo glad now that we stayed home - even though it's a bit lonely, we are warm, and safe and the girls provide great companionship. I light lots of candles (way too many candles, according to my Dad), sleep on the couch in the living room in front of the Christmas tree with the girls snuggled up beside me, and enjoy watching many of the concerts on PBS. That has become our little tradition. Tomorrow I will make a ham dinner and we'll go to the park. This morning I took my snowshoes and there was hardly anyone there. The snow is a little deep for the girls right now though, and I had to pull Princess up out of a snowbank a couple of times. Tim goes cross country skiing with Elvis, but when I've tried it with the girls, it seems like there is just too much equipment (poles, long skis) and I'm always running into them.

We wish all of our friends - corgi and human - a very Merry Christmas!

Blizzard Bloggings

With weather forecasting being what it is these days, we sure weren't caught off guard by the first big snowstorm of the season. We'd been hearing about it for a week! Sometimes the reality doesn't live up to the hype, but this time it did. We got a triple dose of snow (11 inches and counting), wind (35-50 mph for the past 18 hours) and bitter cold (-11 and dropping). So it was a good day to snuggle up with the girls inside. When they were younger, nothing could dampen their enthusiasm for snow, but today they were quite content to just hunker down and sleep away the day while I worked on my Christmas cards (a Tasha Tudor stamped image that I must say I've gotten quite tired of coloring X 100). The girls went outside to go potty a couple of times and weren't quite sure how to get around that giant drift at the bottom of the deck, but where there's a will, there's a way.

Tomorrow I will dig out and make them a little path through the back yard. They love to make tracks and chase Sadie - our black lab neighbor - through the snow.