Random Wintery Stuff

It seems like winter has arrived.


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Sunday was the Christmas pageant at the kids' school -- our last one. Every year, the first- and second-graders sing together as a kind of chorus, and the third-graders act out the Christmas story and sing any solos. This year, Catherine played an angel, and she looked beautiful. But now that she's in third grade, this was our last pageant. We'll miss it.


Sort of.


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On Saturday, we decorated the house for Christmas. Nicely understated, I must say -- festive, but dignified. Nothing like what the guy below did to decorate his house


The original blog posting is here, but I'll include the picture and the explanation:






"Good news is that I truly out did myself this year with my Christmas decorations. The bad news is that I had to take him down after 2 days. I had more people come screaming up to my house than ever.

Great stories. But two things made me take it down.

First, the cops advised me that it would cause traffic accidents as they almost wrecked when they drove by. Second, a 55 year old lady grabbed the 75 pound ladder almost killed herself putting it against my house and didn't realize it was fake until she climbed to the top (she was not happy). By the way, she was one of many people who attempted to do that. My yard couldn't take it either. I have more than a few tire tracks where people literally drove up my yard."

We just put candles in the windows....

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Also, over the weekend, we had our first little bit of snow, enough to cover the lawn before it melted. Last night, we had more -- about four inches, and it's now turning to rain, with the high winds coming in a few hours. The kids have the day off, though Southern has classes (probably because it's the last day of the semester). John is especially happy; he was really looking forward to a snow day, and he and Catherine took appropriate measures to ensure that it happened.

Now, when I was a kid, we used to just wish for snow, maybe wake up extra early to see what happened and listen for cancellations. But these days, there are rituals. The kids put their pajamas on inside out and put a spoon under their pillow when they go to sleep, and that's supposed to guarantee a snow day. They've been doing it since Peter was in pre-school. And it seems to get more elaborate evry year -- pajamas inside out and backwards; lick the spoon first; put five spoons under the pillow; turn around five times before you lie down. Thanks to my sister-in-law Mary for finding a story from last winter about this weird ritual, which I thought was just a Connecticut thing (since it didn't exist in Massachusetts or Maryland when Isabel and I were kids) but apparently it's awhole East Coast thing.


Welcome to winter.