The advent of Advent

Sam and Susan sat down and wrote out thank-yous for his birthday gifts. Sam is pictured here sitting at the little desk we got from Stu and Sue long ago, copying down the letters from the fridge.

I should stop there and not tell you that after adding several designs on the page he was unhappy with one of them which looked too porcine rather than canine, so he threw it away. After that, he decided it was too hard for him, so he tried tracing the letters, and when that failed, he went straight to his comfort zone and designed original works of art.

Here are Sam and Lexie watching tv during a play date. Lexie's mom Liz says she loves to photograph kids while they watch tv, since they seem so quiet and angelic. :-)

Sam was a real trooper at several point during our long weekend. He naturally came along when we went to buy a Christmas tree. This year we cut our own, which meant trudging through the fields in cold, windy weather under the failing sun, Sam repeating through chattering teeth, "I'm cold!" Then Sunday after going to a playground I took him out back with me while I raked the trees hiding under the bushes and along the house. The leaf pile was too wet to jump in, so he just entertained himself while I worked. After that, I had to work in the garage, and again Sam puttered.

Then, when it must have seemed to Sam that he would never do anything interesting again, Susan swooped in and painted ornaments with him! They both did a fine job.

For the first year we are putting lights outside. At Sam's urging we are using multicolored lights. ("Multicolor is my favorite color!") We've always been staid, elegant, white-light people, but this amounts to a religious dogma with Sam, so we are willing to be flexible and give it a shot. :-) Sam "helped" put the lights on the bushes, even.

So nice that it was warm enough to play outside more than once this weekend. Yesterday we went to a playground I've mentioned before, in East Rochester. Rochester is mired in a depressed job and housing market--has been for years. And East Rochester makes the rest of Rochester look like it's flourishing. It's like it has its own personal cloud hovering above it. BUT, it has a nice large park, so I am not deterred.

It was worth the time yesterday. Not only did Sam have a great time playing with other kids who were there (they pretended to bake hams and pies and pizza, before deciding they were vampires and chasing me around). But we also enjoying visiting the nativity scene they'd set up. (First day of Advent, and it was the second he'd seen, the first being at the tree farm, which has live animals roaming amongst the statues.) Sam loved exploring it, but was a little alarmed when one of the Oriental kings tried to take a nose dive as Sam walked by. As the friendly (!) Ukrainian (?) grandma explained (about the wise man), "He's tired--he's been walking for a long time."

Come to think of it, it can't be too bad a neighborhood--no one's stolen the baby Jesus. :-)

One last photo: I took Sam to a wooded area behind a local elementary-school playground and we were delighted to find a HUGE leaf pile, clearly assembled by front loader.

Happy Advent!