Dancing Around the Edges

For the first time in a long time, things are happening in our lives that I don't feel comfortable writing about here. And since some of the things are Big Things and are taking up a lot of space in my brain, I just haven't been writing at all. It seems measly and even a bit dishonest, really, to write about the small things right now, but I am going to do it anyway.

five small things:

1.  My parents celebrated forty years of marriage a couple weekends ago. Forty years is kind of a long time. We celebrated with brunch at Cygnus (YUM) and the girls made them cards. That's about as big-deal as they wanted, but I still think it was pretty special.

2.  Jemma told me cheerfully that I had a baby in my tummy one morning. Which . . . no. And on that note, the January detox is still mostly in effect.

3.  Our family worked for a whole weekend on a five-hundred-piece puzzle in the middle of the floor in the hallway. (I was not around when this location was chosen and the puzzle was begun.) Allocation of puzzle-doing: Stephanie, 3 pieces; Annie, 5 pieces; Jason, 200 pieces; Jemma, all the rest.

4.  Last Wednesday, it was 55 and sunny and we played hopscotch in the driveway after running home from school with no coats, like so:

On Friday, the walk home looked like this:

Winter is confusing.

5.  We applied for a zoning variance that would allow us to demolish our current garage and re-build it in a better location, and it passed! We are so happy that we'll finally be able to get rid of the concrete/pea gravel/chain-link-fence "backyard" and create a little postage stamp of yard and functional patio for some privacy behind our house. Though outdoor construction won't begin until spring, there's lots to do in the meantime, including moving the girls' bedrooms upstairs and making plans to construct a main floor laundry room (yay!) and an actual mudroom. With luck, this will be the last winter when wet snow pants will leave puddles on my kitchen floor.