Happy January!

Every year, after Christmas is over, I take a breath and think, "Okay, what comes next?"  Usually, it dawns on me that Chinese New Year, or Lunar New Year is the next thing coming.  Unfortunately, after Christmas is too late to order silks from China and have them arrive here in time.  

So instead of lovely silks, we're making do this year with... 

 

A Year of the Bunny t-shirt I made with my Cricut.  I've got a couple blank tees for Valentine's Day, too, I just haven't decided what I want on them yet.  

We've been to the library several times over the longer than expected break.  

The next book I'm thinking of reading to my 3rd grade class is set in Hawaii, so I tested out a simple lei craft.  Just colorful straws and flowers strung on yarn.  It will give the kids another opportunity to use the yarn needles.  I think I'm also going to do some lacing cards soon, as I was really surprised at how poorly our last "sewing" craft went.  It inspired me to want to work on manual dexterity a little bit.  

So we've had some storms here.  And the town where our school is has been evacuated a couple of times.  And the roads flooded, and the power went out, and trees fell over, and the internet is still down there.  This resulted in us having an extra week and a half off from school after our expected Christmas break.  We just never went back.  

But since we're in the next town over, we've been okay, for the most part.  Just off school/work because we literally could not get there, or it was dark/cold, etc.  So we've been reading.  A lot.  I'm 11 books into 2023 so far.  

I feel like we spent a lot of our 3+ week long break at the library.  

Not a bad thing; just... an unplanned one.  Later on, when the weather is nice and we have to make up all those lost days, I'm afraid spring fever will hit hard.  

Because storms are not my idea of go outside and play weather.  

I more than hit my reading goal of 80 books in 2022.  

Hullo!  Why is that tree napping in our yard?  

Dear me, that's not good.

That just snapped right off, didn't it?  

Paul set to work with the chain saw, and I came along behind him, pulling branches out of the way and tossing them into a pile.  

We made quick work of turning a big tree into small pieces.  

And a rather impressive pile of branches.  

I know what's going to be in our yard waste trash can for the next 6 months.  

This is Josiah's "Darn you!" face when he came in from finding the potato in a Santa hat by the spudometer in his car.  

Fiona has a new terrible habit.  She's been chasing her tail--while standing on the small, narrow banister.  Here, she seems to be surrendering to the space heater.  

Hannah continues to try out new recipes for dinner.  She made an Asian egg drop soup that was quite tasty.  

Oh look.  More books.  

Looking forward to finally heading back to school tomorrow and taking down my Christmas bulletin board!