New Toys & New Joys

 So if the Holiday Break had two parts - they were 1) Holiday and 2) Break. So far I've just been updating about the Holiday stuff - Christmas at Home, Christmas in Xenia and New Year's Eve. And the Snowy Days posts (here and here) fall somewhere in between.  But, this my friends, is the Break post.  The post that details the blissful "slow family time" where all of the normal routines get tossed out the window and lots of magical things happen that wouldn't otherwise be possible. When you have a set of those days out in front of you, it's possible to shelve the To Do List and just.spend.time.together.

There was a lot of that. And, already (even if it sounds admittedly cliche), these moments seem like little dreamy snapshots in time. Yea, we really did spend several days just playing. Being super silly. Listening to Peter & the Wolf over and over and over. Playing with new toys and experiencing the new joys they brought. Cracking open geodes. Creating masterpieces. Averting our adult eyes from the disaster of two kids pulling very stale gumdrops off the gingerbread houses and popping them in their mouths like we would never notice. Making two pots of coffee. Finding new quiet spots to cuddle and read. Talking about the last year and daydreaming about the next one. Dressing up.

Here are some pictures of these quiet, happy moments that we cherish most. (Some of these I just love because the kids had no idea I was watching.) Enjoy...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All by herself.

 Oh, and we got two new snails. And a giant ball of floating moss. And we love all three of them like family!

 

Josie got a new container of hand-me-downs from her very favorite hand-me-downer and if you can't tell from this picture, she was blissfully, joyously, dancing on the couch HAPPY beyond belief! And had to try on everything. Hear me. Everything. (Lou & I still don't have the words to express our "overwhelmedness" with the generosity of this hand-me-downer. We're so speechless that we're just making up words like "overwhelmedness.")

Oh and we discovered Lego. And while my inner-Feminist is screaming for her first Lego set being a "girl Lego" set, I'll promise you we had lots of conversation while we were building about just how crazy it is that there is such a thing. 

And then down came the tree. And because we bought the tree from a great place with good trees, it didn't make a huge mess.

Then Lou & the kids threw snowballs at my bathroom window while I showered.

 The bummer was that we spent a lot of this break with nasty Upper Respiratory Infections. The good news is there was way too much fun to be had to let it bother us too much. And the really good news is that a Hot Toddy and the lavender neck wrap from my sister worked miracles!

 Oh, I have to also mention that the annual tradition of putting away old toys to make room for new ones ran into a little roadblock this year. I hit Sophie. Sophie the Giraffe that is. Sophie that dates back to 2007 when Sophie could only be ordered through a special catalog and didn't come for 14 days. Original Sophie. Sophie that baby Josie loved and chewed and then passed on to Baby Bea. When Baby Bea was born and I got to hand over Sophie, it was so overwhelming because there for awhile I was sure there would never be another baby to hand over Miss Sophie to. Then there was. And little Bea loved Sophie. Fast forward to December 2012 and I'm supposed to lock Sophie away to make room for a new toy because another Schneider girl has outgrown her? Ain't happening! So, she lives here now.  I mean, she lives here forever now.

 One last piece of holiday fun: