Who’s the fairest of them all?

Fair are the meadows

Fairer still the woodlands

Robed in the blooming garb of spring

Between Lizzy’s new bird cam [above] and Jason’s new doorbell [below], we’ve turned ourselves into a surveillance state since Christmas.

The birds are admittedly charming, but when we peer through our exterior cameras, we’re not seeing any blooming garb of spring.

The kids created colorful string art indoors à la Jackson Pollock.

Everyone’s gotten a chance to talk to Jason through the doorbell.

This is Jeff, enjoying the Christmas nuts Liz left for him.

Both cameras also have night vision.  Here’s the video that explained to Lizzy how the seeds were disappearing so fast overnight.

As far as I know, that guy doesn’t have a name yet.

Today is overcast and drizzly.  I can look out my window or at my camera feeds all day long and I won’t be seeing any garb of spring out there for quite a while.  But—

Jesus is fairer,

Jesus is purer

Who makes the woeful heart to sing.

Better than spring.  All the fairer Jesus shines when the winter world is dreary.

Wisdom teeth

 

Don’t do drugs, we say.

Stay away from strange men who would hurt you, we say.

Don’t crack your bones in pieces, we say.

And then one day we send them into a little room with a strange man so he can shoot them up with drugs, cut them open, and wrench out some wisdom teeth, while we pay the nice lady at the desk hundreds of dollars to have it done.

It seems ironic that we call them wisdom teeth.

I think Jeddy’s surprised at the amount of numbness and blood.  

I’m surprised at how traumatized *I* feel.  Fear of my child not waking up well from anesthesia, combined with the thought of an IV, combined with the surgeon calmly describing the rare possibility of floating bone fragments in the “sockets” [*shudder*] set me up for discomfort, and then taking sole charge of a child who’s my child but not really acting like my child; not to mention a child who is bigger than me and has a history of fainting and throwing up at times when he HASN’T been drugged; who is also drooling blood and tied up like Jacob Marley

 

and isn’t making sense because he can’t move his face and his mouth is stuffed with gauze (and also see above re: drugged), but I’m pretty sure he’s telling me he can’t see out of one eye and asking if he needs to put an ice pack on it, and I’m wondering how do you kindly explain to someone that the reason he can’t see out of it is because he has one eye closed, and an ice pack probably won’t help with that, but it’ll all sort itself out soon; all made for an uncomfortable drive home.

He’s ok though.  He’s even figured out how to open both eyes at once.  And I’ll probably get over it someday.

#tbt

There was a time back in the old days when the extended family would gather at Nana’s house for Christmas, before it got to be too overwhelming.

Grandchildren were small and few in number.

Ada and Jeddy, 2 of 5 grandchildren at the time.  Also:  the velvet Christmas baby footie suit on Ada!  😱😍

Alternating Christmases were at Grandma’s house, including the year our kids got a mini trampoline, which they definitely needed to get their energy out.

Sadly, you can see baby Caleb and me on the screen Lizzy is peering at.  Caleb was too sick to leave the house so we video called instead.  This was way before 2020 too; we were ahead of our time.  

Unfortunately Caleb and I decided to reenact the pathos this year and we FaceTimed Grandma’s house again instead of dragging our sickly selves off our own couch.  But this year he required far less snuggling and he could blow his own nose, one of which is definitely a win.

That week where we don’t know who we are, what day it is, or what the heck is going on

…which could describe beach week or other vacation, but in this case I’m talking about the indecipherable week between Christmas and New Year’s.  

Midweek the younger kids shipped off to Grandma’s house for a couple nights of cousin sleepovers, so Jason took me on a Very Romantic walk in the park under the Christmas lights.

Basically my Christmas vacation looked like day after blissful day of this:

One day was different because Nana and Grandpa came, fresh off their Australian cruise.

New Year’s Eve I got my act together enough to make a giant charcuterie board on butcher paper on the counter, which is totally the way to do it.

Easy labeling and easy cleanup.

Happy New Year!