It’s A Beautiful Day

Emma

In The Window

The Last Winter Show

When New Englanders Protest

 

And The Winner Is.....

 

Grace's avant-garde inspired by Van Gogh's Starry Night! 

She spent two weeks working on it. She painted it, 

dyed the hair and created the adornments. 

Including this stunning crown! 

And then all the students and teachers got to cast their votes. 
Today the winner was announced, and Grace was deemed "the best of the best"! 
What a fabulous way to kick off the weekend! xo 

Wednesday

Our (German) Watchword

 

I happened upon this word when I was reading Marmee by Sarah Miller. This is a wonderful imagining of the Little Women story from Marmee's point of view. Marmee has always been my most favorite of the Little Women characters (though I really do love them all!) and if I am being honest it's really wild to me to think that I did not choose "Marmee" for my mama name back when Grace was a newborn. 

In this book, Marmee spends a lot of time working with, and supporting, the Hummel family. One of the things she does is help Mrs. Hummel learn to speak English, and in turn Mrs. Hummel teaches Marmee to speak German. During one of their visits the word geborgenheit was taught. To be sure that I was reading this word correctly I consulted Google Translate. Between the explanation in the story and the  the definition that Google shared (picture above) I knew that I needed to propose this word as our watchword for the year when we gathered on New Year's Eve to choose our word and set our intentions for 2026. Dave and the girls loved it and agreed that it was the perfect choice! It is out hope that geborgenheit will be in abundance for all of humanity this year. xo 

Welcome Back Hens!

 

The Hens are home! Dave enclosed their run so that it can become their temporary home until the spring when it will be easier (read: not insanely cold out) to rebuild their actual coop. On the next warm-ish winter day, however, we'll head out to paint a cheery scene on the walls of their temporary coop because in its current state it's giving creepy-shack-in-the-woods-inhabited-by-a-hermit vibes and it's freaking us out. Thankfully the wreath helps....a bit. xo

Our Hopes for 2026

 

On New Year's Eve

Emma spent the majority of her New Year's Eve getting the deck cleared and gathering the bits of our pulverized Bird Buddy collected. Once she had the branches cut down and piled she called me to come see how much she had cleared. It was then that I decided to take a closer look at the damage that had occurred as a result of the wind taking the tree down. Seeing the chicken coop brought tears to my eyes. It's truly incredible that none of the hens were hurt or injured with how much damage the coop sustained. The goal now, in addition to continued clean up is to get the coop repaired so that we can bring the hens home from the Miele's house. We are so incredibly grateful to them for taking our small flock in. 

Art by Jennifer Vallez pretty much sums up how I felt out this year (outside of this house that is). 

It wouldn't be New Year's Eve if we did not have Chinese food for dinner, review the goals we had set for the year that was ending (we did pretty good!) and set out intentions/goals for the coming year. Here's to hoping that the chaos of 2025 stays in 2025 and that with the arrival of 2026 compassion, kindness and a just world for all arrive with it. xo