Merry Christmas, Happy 2011

We took a fun pre-xmas trip up to ski at Bromley in VT...thanks to Marc's planning skills and motivated spirit to get H and P on the slopes at an early age. Beautiful lodging in Manchester Village. (hate to admit it, but while the skiing was great, the Yves Delorme outlet was quite a draw, too.) H and P are becoming very confident skiers and are, most of all, having a lot of fun with the sport. We are planning on heading up to Stowe later in the month.








There was something particularly nice about Xmas this year. I can't really pinpoint what it was, it was just uniquely festive and memorable for us. Here's a sampling of our Xmas eve and day.





























LOVE and best wishes for a HEALTHY NEW YEAR!

Hiking, (farewell to) Gymnastics, LC Xmas

Ama and Boppa live on the edge of a great trail system. We'll look forward to woods blanketed in snow, perhaps in time for Christmas.











It's with some sadness that we've decided to end the gymnastics era. It's so clearly a sport Portia had a talent for & loved...she'd gotten to a point, though, where the danger factor felt a bit much to bear. Plus, with the next step meaning hours and hours of weekly practice in the gym, it felt like a good time to move onwards. And so to the pool we've gone. She seems to be a natural, like her dad, with pretty much any athletic undertaking, so she's taken to swimming like she took to gymnastics. Selfishly I'd rather be hanging out in pools and dedicating hours to swim practice than cervical spine injuries waiting to happen in stinky gyms.

Why this sport is being replaced with swimming......following this dismount she landed painfully on her head, causing what we feared would be a neck injury...she popped up, though, and said: "ouch, my knee hurts."







A couple of weeks ago we started Xmas festivities with a Lawn Club celebration.

Messiah

It's Christmas time, and that just means I blast the Messiah at deafening levels. In the car, in the house. This is just the only way to fully experience this music. In the car on the way home after a (so) fun couple of hours with my babes on a search for a gift for sister from brother, I not only had Prince of Peace cranked, but I, too, was belting away. I love love love this music. (the awesome recording, courtesy of Marna, only adds to the brilliance of it) I didn't sense that H and P were really getting why their mom was singing away like a maniac in the front seat, probably needing to pull over. So, after Prince of Peace ends, I turn down the music, and, at a stop light, turn around and explain to them that, "This music is transformative, it's other-worldly, it's intense beyond compare, it's so gorgeous that I just have to play it super loudly. It just makes me feel so alive!" To which Hugo, exasperated, says: "But you're already alive, Mama." Not all hope is lost, though, since when we pulled into the driveway, after the 3rd run through Prince of Peace, Hugo says: "I have to admit, Mama, I actually do really like it." And then came the echo from Portia. See, it's all a matter of exposure.

Earlier that afternoon, goofing around in the kitchen, Hugo laughingly says to Portia: "I could take you down if I had a little more fat." I think I did fall off my chair. We're always commenting on how Hugo's a danger to himself what with his bones knocking into eachother. Zero insulation on this child. It's cute when he can poke fun at his own skinniness with comments like 'taking his sister down'.