The last week of October we got our first snow of the season. Joachim went to the front door exclaiming, "Birds! mama birds!" Sure enough the birds were flocking right outside our door, it was a pretty impressive sight.
Joachim doesn't remember snow from last year (he didn't like it then anyway) but this year he's read about it in books, especially Goodnight Moon which features mittens drying by the fire and snow falling outside. When Joachim saw the snow (the sun was barely lighting the sky) he donned his winter boots still in his PJ's, "like in Sposure Esposure" he exclaimed (mama has been checking Northern Exposure out from the library and that's where he get's the rest of his winter information). He even wore his mittens that I knit and he rejected last year.
The biggest surprise of all for him was that snow is cold! But once he accepted that fact his cold endurance outlasted mine. We made a couple of snowmen and I had quite a bit of fun vicariously living through his enthusiasm.
He's saying to himself, "I a good workerman, I clean mama's car, I a good workerman."
And when we did go inside we hung our wet clothes by the fire and made Pumpkinbread.
And for those of you still reading this far down my blog I want to clarify that this is not my daily life. I've had many difficult days especially recently as I mentally and emotionally prepare for the addition to our family. I'm working through feelings of loss of my dyadic relationship with my first born and a sense of inadequacy that I don't appreciate and enjoy him enough in the time that I have. I put off playing play-do and I have an all too short interest in train tracks and blocks. I try to include him in the kitchen as much as possible, but too many times I put on Veggie Tales instead.
I recently read in a book how important it is to look at your life in focus and really make your treasures a priority. Rather than being inspired I just felt lost and scattered. We ARE expecting to move in to our house in early December and that will take a load off of the scattered feeling, but I know it's also just in me.
You can see the remnants of our snowman strewn across the yard in the above picture. When designing the costume I asked Ben to get a picture of a dragon that I could stencil on the cape. He looked up the history of the Jones surname and found that our crest is a blue and silver lion with blood dripping from its chest. So he drew a lion, but I painted it red and left off the bleeding chest. The surname comes from the personal name John, or the Latin Johannes, meaning "Yahweh is gracious." That's a nice name to carry I think. The motto is "without God, without anything." I think they mean that in a good way.
We met up with Willon and his family, his mama made him the most adorable Dragon costume and together they stormed the streets of Delta (annual trick-or-treat at the stores on Main Street).
After thoroughly inspecting the basement window with Willon, Joachim still had to make sure nothing fishy was going on in there.
