I always have so much trouble summing up things like major holidays. I think it is because they are so full of wonderful little stories. It’s hard to decide which to tell and it’s sometimes hard to fit them all together into a single post. The other option would be a whole series of little posts which would be pretty fun. I don’t know that they would get done any more speedily though. Here are some of the stories of our weekend.

We went to the Long John Jamboree and the Snow Castle. We decided to go early to avoid a possible nap time conflict and then discovered nothing opened for half an hour. We got a little cold. We ran into friends and neighbours. We had fun. We watched a play. We went down a big slide. We stood on the ice. (I need to remember to change the aperture setting on my camera to reflect current conditions.)

Maisie wore her new mittens, under protest, for exactly as long as it took us to go down the big slide, solely because they were a condition of getting to go down the big slide. She cried a bit because I picked the slower of the two slides.

Maisie did an egg hunt in our living room. She found six sparkly eggs full of fun things. Some of those fun things were play strawberries and a teeny bottle of blue nail polish.

I made Maisie’s fourth Easter bonnet. She was very excited about it. Then she hated it and wouldn’t let it touch her head. Then she was really excited about it again and asked to wear it outside. But she wouldn’t wear a coat.

Maisie did a second egg hunt with her cousins. She got a butterfly painted on her forehead by her aunt.

Maisie and I did some colouring.

We had friends over for shovelling and tea on the Monday. Grown-ups chatted. Kiddos moved snow around, stuck butterfly stickers to their tea cups, hid in the tent, and sold food from the "delivery window". It was so warm out jackets were optional. After they left we went for a walk with Abby. I carried a hat and sweater for Maisie but she never asked for them. I carried a hat for me too but never wanted it.

A random list of things keeping us busy these days:

1. Maisie has rediscovered her cradle and tossed out all the stuffs I had living in it so she could climb in and curl up. She’s done this before (and will probably do it again) but I still find it so funny. She’s so much bigger than she was when I was first taking pictures of her in it.

2. Maisie’s light garden is try it’s best but it turns out Abby absolutely loved the broccolini I brought inside so that plant didn’t have much of a chance. The thyme is doing better. It seems to be both uninteresting to our four legged critters and able to withstand the ministrations of the two legged one.

3. I had my table at the craft fair a couple of weekends ago. It went pretty well. Half way through Maisie and Rob came by the bring my a muffin and some coffee and Maisie decided she didn’t want to leave … or be put down … so we demonstrated some colourful baby wearing for the rest of the afternoon. She was great a smiling to everyone who stopped by my table.

4. I’ve been working on my Clarke sweater. I had a bit of a panic when I did some math and thought I was going to run out of yarn and need to frog back one of my red body stripes but after knitting part of a sleeve it turns out my math was just wrong and I can keep going. I think I might knit the sleeves as I go along though. Just to be sure.

5. It’s been cold out. We’ve been drinking cocoa. It’s like I forget how awesome it is until I’m really cold and then I remember I can make it and I do and it’s so, so good. Want to make some too? 1 tablespoon each of cocoa and sugar in a mug, mix well, add a little bit of milk to make a thin paste, fill your mug and stir well, microwave for about a minute and a half in 30 second intervals, stirring between.

6. Maisie has been especially interested in carrying around her smaller stuffs recently. They become babies (my favourite is the baby ladybug) and will cry or crawl around or need to be kissed and rocked. She wanted to wear one the other day so I helped her put on her unicorn mei tai. This is probably the clearest picture I’ve ever managed to catch of her wearing it. The baby was tired. It needed to sleep.

7. Maisie and Rob had spaghetti together for lunch yesterday. Rob said “you should really take a picture of this” so I grabbed the camera. Maisie’s spaghetti: noodles, sliced ham, ketchup, chocolate bar (Oh, Henry I think). Yum.

8. Maisie went to day care today wearing a fairy dress. She looks just so cute. She asked me if she’d be able to fly around the house with her wings.

Happy New Year. I hope you had a lovely holiday. Ours was really nice. Full of family and friends and good food and quiet time. Maisie was very excited about everything this year. That's one of her more recent words in fact. "Me 'xcited" she'll say and bounce around the room. It make me smile so much. We're easing back into our usual routine after almost two weeks of being on holiday. Rob is back at work today and Maisie and I go back to daycare and work on Tuesday.

The sun is coming back. The difference is already becoming noticeable. We've got still got two or three months of cold weather ahead of us but knowing the days are getting longer already lifts my mood and makes me think of my garden. I finished Maisie's Christmas stocking at the very last minute (thank you, my dear, for sleeping in on Christmas morning). I need to make sure I take a picture of it before it gets packed away for next year. Maisie loves to look at all the Christmas things. I put ornaments that could be handled on the bottom of the tree and they are regularly removed and carried around. We taught her that they all have to return to their home when she's done. It mostly works. Ollie and Fred were in raptures when we finally let them play in a bag that some of our gifts came in. We tossed in a pinch of the catnip that was part of the gift (thanks Samera, now we know why they kept trying to crawl inside) and they spent a wonderful time diving in and out of the bag. I've been working on perfecting my coffee making. I only drink decaf and am tired of the mediocre cup that decaf so often gives. I found this set of instructions a while ago and my coffee drinking experiences have improved incredibly. I'd never have guessed that a six dollar plastic cone would be what I needed. Abby had a pretty major health scare at the end of November. She's okay now but I think it makes us appreciate getting to spend so much time with her that much more. I think she enjoys having us around all the time too. I'm not sure if we're as enthralling as the local fox though. Maisie's vocabulary also  includes the words "fox" (complete with the X) and "Abby hush". I love this picture of Maisie with the ball of yarn just because of the story attached to it. I'd set up a little photo studio* on the armchair because the light was nice but Maisie changed my plans by climbing onto the chair and getting comfortable. I asked her if she would like to help me photograph my new yarn. She answered enthusiastically and held each ball on her lap while I snapped a photo. Then she asked me to show her the pictures I took. She's very interested in cameras and pictures right now. I'm very interested in seeing how this will develop as she gets older.

*I threw a blanket over the chair and turned the whole thing to face the window.