This and that

We went to the woods  the other day to play and gather pinecones--I read about a craft where you dip the pinecones in beeswax a few times then add glitter.  Cool, right?  Well, with Dumpling on the job we collected about 35 pinecones, although, many of them were somewhat rotten.  Dumpling goes for quantity over quality, as did Pea when she was his age.  (I loved collecting leaves with him--he would just grab a handful of brown, dried out leaves and shove them in his basket, while Pea and I would carefully select only the perfect red or yellow ones.) 

I made Dumpling's hat.  I really like it.  He kind of likes it.  This is a great spot--there is a little pond and a gazebo with a labyrinth in it and some small hiking trails.  Basically, the children just run circles around the pond and hide things in the leaves, and find lots and lots of pinecones.  We met up with a friend of Pea's, and they just ran and played.  It is wonderful to get them outside away from playgrounds and see what they do. They need so little to have a good time.   I love where we live--we are very close to the admittedly small town center, and not far from this, although I sometimes fantasize about living on a bigger property where we wouldn't have to drive to get to the woods.   But it is nice to be able to walk to town, and have neighbors--I probably haven't written about how fabulous our neighbors are, but, well they are. 

Today, the guy who is going to build us a fence came in with this bobcat and ripped out all (okay, most--that stuff is tenacious) of the English Ivy that was growing along our fence.  Dumpling and Pea got out the lawn chairs and watched--I can't believe I didn't get a picture of them.  Jesse was out there as well, as both he and I were a little (a lot) nervous that Dumpling was going to run over and attempt to fling himself on the Bobcat.   Have I mentioned my thrilling plans to plant raspberries and blueberries there?  I may have.  I am pretty excited.  The soil looks pretty good--it's a little heavy, but not as bad as it could have been--we never have bothered to rake there, because we didn't care to save the Ivy, so there is some good leaf mold there.   And maybe we will let the chickens that we are planning to get run around out there to help it out some...hmmm.  Big plans, big plans.

We also bought our Christmas tree today.  We are not going to put it up, as we generally like to keep it up until Epiphany, but we figured we might as well buy it now and put in water, since all the trees are out now.   Again, it is totally amusing how undiscriminating the children were about the tree.  I remember agonizing over getting the perfect one as a child--luckily, my brother and I were pretty much on the same wavelength--get the biggest one that my parents would possibly allow--but it was hard to decide which one was the biggest.  We had to look at every single one.  Maybe that will come later, but now, they basically ran around the place, crying out enthusiastically, "I love that one!" to every tree that I pulled out (I still kind of agonize), then running away  and telling the person working their that they had stockings that I made that were still sleeping but were going to be hung by the fireplace so Santa could come down the chimney.  I am not sure he understood them.

And then there was the annual Black Mountain Christmas Parade.  It is so much fun now that Pea actually remembers things from year to year, and gets excited.  It is a sweet, small town parade, with a floats from the various churches, scouting operations, wolf dog rescuers, sustainable living organization, and WWF (that is wrestling)  arena (?).  There were several people in Grinch costumes, to which Dumpling repeated to himself and to me, "those are just guys in costumes.  They are not real."   I didn't get any pictures of the actual parade because the thing is, everyone in the parade hurls candy, and the children chase it, and I felt compelled to make sure that in their sugar induced frenzy they did not rush under the wheels of a huge truck.  Pea in particular got a tremendous amount of loot, (Dumpling, although excited by candy, was a little to overwhelmed by the whole concept of candy being thrown from vehicles--I found myself stepping on pieces of candy so he could pick them up without getting them snatched--not that I wanted him to have candy, but you know, fairness...I don't know).    I did tell Pea about the Sugar Fairy, which was kind of a mistake because she totally went for it, and I have been scrounging coins to place in her basket in exchange for the candy.  But I did it--we will have to see about Dumpling tomorrow as he didn't nap and then crashed.  As must I.