Yurt

I want to live in a yurt. There, I said it.

This is not the time to tell me that its impractical or uncomfortable. I don't want to hear it. I just want to have my yurt fantasy.

I want to live in a yurt with a nice porch. And a good internet connection. Something like this will do:



For candy houses this year, I made a candy yurt. My fantasy yurt would be best if it were, in fact, made of pretzels and had hershey kisses for solar arrays.

Candy Houses

One of my favorite activities at the holidays is making candy houses with my family.

We don't do classic gingerbread houses because, well, I'm too impatient to make gingerbread and construct the appropriate architecture. Instead, my husband makes cardboard house forms which we cover in candy.

Going to the store to purchase various kinds of candy is a great part of the fun of this activity. However, it is a little embarrassing to check out with a cart full of junk food!

Once home, we use icing to stick the candy (and cookies, and pretzels, etc!) to the cardboard.

Here are pictures of our process and this year's houses....

















And here are our finished houses:

Happy New Year * 2011

This is my New Year’s prayer, stolen from the words of Thomas Merton.

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going, I do not see the road ahead of me, I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore, I will trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”

Amen

Post Script

Apropos of my last posting, I should mention that I'd also like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.

Childhood Memories

Over dinner tonight the whole family was trading memories of favorite childhood TV shows. Even though the youngest member of our household is 10 years old, he has enough distance from the "old" shows he used to watch (BOB THE BUILDER, THE WIGGLES, BEAR IN THE BIG BLUE HOUSE) to participate!

The 16 year old reminisced about SESAME STREET, BIG COMFY COUCH, BETWEEN THE LIONS, and (yes, it's true!) BARNEY!

I bring this up because EK and I both share special memories of one particular 1970s show. In fact, we both decided that it formed our love for social studies, geography, and culture. And it probably also made us politically and socially liberal!

So, who else remembers THE BIG BLUE MARBLE??

This is Why My Husband is a Great Dad

Special K is a Super Dad.

This evening, the end of an exciting snow day in central Texas, my husband fashioned body sleds for the children out of large leaf bags. Yet one more reason why I love this man!

Snowy Morning in my Texas Backyard