Winter Celebrations

It may not be evident a few days from now, but each year we are trying harder and harder to make our celebrations more about each other and honoring traditions, and less about presents. Here are some of the things we've been doing....
We celebrated the first day of winter break with snowman pancakes.
We had a tea party and shared Christmas cookies with Anna and Sebastien.
Clara celebrated Grammie's arrival by donning a fancy new coat, hat and gloves (okay, so that was a gift).
We celebrated the Solstice with a lovely party at Sharon's. We made pomander balls.
And wrote wish sticks...
...which we threw in the fire.
We also made some ice bird-feeder/sun catchers, which are still trying to freeze. Photos of those to come. And we enjoyed Sharon's dapper holiday-dressed giraffes.
The kids celebrated the first day of winter and the lengthening of the days by making a snowman with Grammie.

And more baking, of course.
Grammie took charge of the traditional candy-cane cookies this year while Pete and I celebrated his time off work by running some last-minute errands together and having a nice lunch.
Here's hoping your winter days are just as filled with warmth as ours!