stir crazy January

The days are dark and short.  I struggle to wake up in the darkness because the sun doesn't rise until we are eating breakfast at this time of the year.  Every one of us are all doing a lot of reading here in the dead of winter.  With no garden to tend to, no flower beds to water, my attention has been mainly indoors, but we are starting to go a little stir crazy.  Today I insisted that the girls and I bundle up and spend time outdoors, even if it is cold.   I (practiced) splitting firewood which the girls stacked, and then we played tag as little snowflakes quietly drifted around us and our laughing, squealing game.  Hot cocoa on our return inside and more reading.  In the evenings we are listening to Daddy read The Open Gate by Kate Seredy, and I am reading aloud Betsy~Tacy by Maud Hart Lovelace - a favorite from my childhood, and one we've already read 3-4 times, but now Rosie is old enough to "be Betsy."  Kate Seredy is another of my childhood favorites, although I have never read this book of hers.

For school, Lyddie and I are reading Children of the New Forest and it is so full of children's innovation and ability to accomplish big tasks that we both are dreaming of how to increase our garden, how to get a milk cow (coming soon, we hope), and so on.  I love books that expand our view of our own abilities.  Another book we recently read that did that very thing is Swallows and Amazons in which the parents allow their children to do a lot of hard things and the children's world just grows and grows.   Of course both of these books are fiction but they provide a great jumping off point for self-confidence.  Because of the chapter we read, Lyddie helped me make dinner tonight (this Chicken and Wild Rice casserole which was delicious!) and cooked the chicken and vegetables and made the salad by herself with just some supervision from me.  This evening I created a few recipe pages as a beginning to a "Kids recipe book" that we can add to as they learn new recipes, until they are each able to plan and cook an entire meal regularly.  That's been my goal for awhile, although we haven't worked diligently at it for some time. Being cooped up in the cold provides the perfect time for it and mental stimulation when we otherwise start to get a little crazy and wild. Searching for the good and beautiful in January helps make the time until we see the sun and warmth seem less interminably long.

{For those interested, the game we are playing in the photos above is Stuffed Fables, a really fun kid-oriented story-based role playing game we first learned about from my sis-in-law, Holly.  The girls got it for Christmas and it's already brought several hours of family fun that we each genuinely enjoy.  Check it out!}