Merry Christmas!

A good time was had by all. A great time, in fact, with Grandma Nancy and Granddad, a visit from Santa and our special addition, the Squirrel Children. The Squirrel Children live outside in our courtyard and are parallel descendants of the Quail Children, who my Grandmama cooked up and I think always gave us one present at Christmas time. Rosemary had no trouble with Santa's visitation, but she had a lot of questions about the squirrels. How do they wrap the presents? Where do they get the wrapping paper? Where do they get the presents? Why do they give us presents when they are so scared of us?

The littler girls enjoyed Christmas mightily. Thanks to Hanukkah they are all trained up on the whole gift thing, and Maggie especially enjoyed passing out other people's gift - maybe unwrapping them just a little on the way, and usually not delivering them to the right person of course.

Recently Sylvia has developed a serious crush on Elmo (without ever having seen Sesame Street, which I can't bear in its contemporary incarnation - barely any puppets! All computer. Why?) She was thrilled with the arrival of her own personal Elmo.

Maggie kept getting art supplies and had to go use them, RIGHT THEN.

 Slippers!

Gorgeous sunset. Chilly day.

Nice bright noses for guiding sleighs.

This was the drawing Maggie made. In the middle of making it she pointed to a line she'd made and said "ssss" - a drawing of a snake!