Leopard Girls

This week is February vacation week, and Clara chose to attend Winter Wol's Nest at the Harris Center.  This left Lee and me home together for a good chunk of the day.  She has some work to do for her CTY course, and Lila is also around this week, so there was no need to entertain her, but today I planned for just the two of us to have an outing together.  I thought we'd go to Nashua, stop at Mother and Child for some clothes, restock some TJ necessities, and top it off with a movie at Chunky's.  

We had a great day.  I was so touched when Lee told me she couldn't eat much breakfast because she was so excited for the day.  We first stopped at A&E Coffee Roasters, had a hot drink and picked out some interesting teas (Toothless Tiger Chai for me, Very Berry for Lee, and Green Mango for Clara).  Then we scored big at Mother and Child.  Lee found several shirts, some pants, a long velvety black skirt, and some hiking boots for the summer.

But the big find was this leopard skin jacket.  And, she found this leopard skin vest for Clara.

"Mom, we have to get this for Clara," she said.

Lee was so excited to give the vest to Clara when she got home from camp.

Clara loved it, and is actually sleeping with it spread out on her pillow right now, so Lee was right on.





The movie was fun too.  Lee is definitely moving beyond kids movies (although not the better ones that most of us enjoy our entire lives), and so we watched McFarland USA, which we thoroughly enjoyed.

Stomach Bug

The kids each had a brief stomach bug this week.   They were both troopers about it and bounced back really quickly.  Lee's timing was ideal, as she was hit after breakfast and pretty much recovered by evening.  Clara, however, came down with it at midnight, and so we had a long and interrupted night which included a fair amount of cleaning up.  She was so sweet, though, and kept saying how much she loved us and how grateful she was that we got up in the middle of the night to take care of her.  Then she wrote us this card:

What a sweet, sweet kid she is.  Now if only I could convince her to give two hoots about spelling.  ;-)

Knick Knacks

For Christmas I found Clara an old type-set tray from an antique store.  I kind of wondered what she would ever put in it and how long it would take her to fill it.  I needn't have worried.

Winter 2015

Well, this winter started off pretty poorly.  It was cold, and then every time it would threaten some precipitation it would warm up and rain.  Pour, actually.  We received inches of rain in December, including a completely lacking-in-Christmas-spirit downpour on Christmas Eve.  The ground was partially frozen and there was nowhere for the water to go.  Then it would get cold again and the water would freeze.  We had weeks and weeks of thick ice that made it treacherous to venture outside.  It was awful.

But, our cries of despair must have been heard.  What a winter we have had the past four weeks or so.  We've had one storm after another, and unlike the coast which is buried in ridiculous amounts of snow, we've received a manageable foot or so at a time.  And, somewhat atypically, the thermometer has not ventured above freezing, and so we have feet of soft fluffy powder on the ground and snow sticking around on the evergreens.  It has been just beautiful.

Of course, it's been very cold too.  But you get used to it!  When I went out this morning in 4 degrees, it felt pretty balmy.  I skied without a hat and with thin gloves on.  Then I realized it was 15 degrees warmer than the previous morning.  So it was, relatively, balmy.  And yesterday we had a heat wave when the temperature hit the mid-20's.  We were all running around without hats or coats.


Oreo has been very happy with this snow.  We take him out snowshoeing or xc-skiing every morning.   The snow has gotten so deep that he's pretty much kept from running off on his own and stays right with us, eager to stay in the broken trail.  Lee and I are teaching him the command "Break Trail" to move him in front, because otherwise he tends to tread on the backs of your skis or snowshoes.

He loves jumping at the trees and knocking the snow off and then enjoying the shower of snow coming down on him, as shown below.  It's pretty funny to watch.

That is him in the middle of the snow shower in the second picture.

Great Clara Quote

We were doing math the other day and Clara was very distracted.  "Mom, my mind's just on screen saver!" she said.

Big Snow Pile

Lots of Fort-Building Going On

Beautiful Morning