snow day

But where are the snows of yester year?

Francois Billon, Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis

After a conference finished at work last week, it was time for a snow day. The Weather Channel was actually calling for snow (100% chance), but in true Virginia Beach style the snow never came. The children of the 757 rejoiced anyways since school was cancelled at the chance of snow. Classic.



Ryan and I had already made plans to head out of town to see some real snow. And by real snow I mean man made snow. Nevertheless, it was white and frozen and it did the trick. I can't remember the last time I went skiing. Probably with Club Snow in high school when I had a crush on Ryan. Please take note of our one picture from the mountain, thank you Ryan for closing your eyes.

mr. fix-it

"Make it work."

-Tim Gunn, Project Runway

One of the many reasons that I love my husband is his incredible ability to fix things. I mean he tore apart our home (in the renovation process) and then put it back together and made it so wonderful. He really is so good at fixing and repairing things.

So when he stepped on his video game headset and cracked it into two pieces, it really wasn't a problem at all. First, he tried super glue. No luck. Then he tried getting me to apply super glue while he held the two pieces of headset together. Apparently two pieces of plastic cannot be attached using super glue. Ryan wasn't discouraged. "Why not tie the headset to my head with my ipod cord?" he thought.

Clearly. Great solution, Ryan. I think I laughed for 20 minutes straight when I walked into the den and saw this:

merry christmas

A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,

For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

Fall on your knees! Oh, hear the angel voices!

Oh night divine, the night when Christ was born;

O night, O Holy Night, O night divine!

Truly he taught us to love one another,

His law is love and his Gospel is peace.

Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother.

And in his name all oppression shall cease.

Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,

Let all within us praise his holy name.

Merry Christmas!

(images from the National Gallery, December 20, 2008)

commonplace

"Commonplaces never become tiresome. It is we who become tired when we cease to be curious and appreciative."

Norman Rockwell

Have you ever stopped and looked at a Norman Rockwell print? I hadn't until recently. I have memories of a glass cabinet at my grandma's house in Pennsylvania where my Grandpa Russell displayed plates with Rockwell prints and old Saturday Evening Post magazines. I wasn't too interested in them as a kid and don't remember ever stopping to look at them. I wish I had.

In November my dad and I went to the opening of the Norman Rockwell exhibit at the Chrysler. My expectations were low. To be quite honest I enjoy scoffing at cartoonish art and prefer the ornate style of Italian Renaissance art -- this is art that is both thought provoking in deeply spiritual ways and also breathtakingly beautiful with delicate, lacy gold details. There is this room in the Louvre, you go up the stairs towards the Winged Victory and then you turn right and go through this corridor lined with incredible Giotto pieces and frescoes and then you enter into this mesmorizing Italian Renaissance room. Each time I find myself in that room I feel small and simple, in awe of the ability of beauty to communicate true, eternal things.

So Dad and I went to see Norman Rockwell and I was taken aback by his work. So simple, yet incredibly communicative and stylized. Commonplace and yet not the least bit trite or cliche. I couldn't quite put my finger on what drew me into the exhibit. Was it his depiction of faces? The way he uses the face as a means of evocating emotion? Certainly that was something I've been thinking about often these past weeks. The paintings recalled faces from deep in my memory -- loved ones, children in need, leaders of our countries. But that didn't seem like the thing that was drawing me in. We enjoyed the exhibit for an hour or so and then decided our ability to appreciate it was saturated and we exited although we had not seen one room in the back was the exhibit.

Tonight we went back to the museum. I was feeling slightly off-kilter, loose ends left undone from work pulled for my attention. The nagging feeling that days are just flying by without acknowledgement as busyness has crept in and pauses and rest and opportunities to notice beauty have been pushed out. The weather was warm, not at all Christmas-like and I have yet to really feel settled into the holidays. These thoughts swirled in my mind as I walked into the Chrysler. The atmostphere inside is always warm and inviting, but this evening felt especially so. The most beautiful evergreen roping glowing with white twinkle lights was draped down the staircases and a tree formed from gorgeous red pointsettas was set to the side in the main room. The wonderfully simply, elegant decorations felt comforting and reorienting. Dad went to get two glasses of wine and we sat and talk and kept saying how pretty the museum looked. We finished our wine and headed into the Rockwell exhibit, into that back room that we had left unexplored during the previous visit.

The room is painted a vibrant yellow and each wall holds a portion of Rockwell's 353 magazine covers. Some of the covers are from actual magazines, mailed to subscribers. They sit in simple frames and they hold still shots of wonderfully American, wonderfully human moments. A girl holding up her prom dress looking in a mirror, a family saying grace before dinner, a young girl self-scrutinizing as a beauty magazine lay open on her lap. I started thinking about these shared moments, about the ways that the magazine images conjured memories from my own life. The anticipation of Christmas as a child, the joys of summer, long car rides torturing my little brother on our way to my grandparents house. It was such a neat experience to walk around this room, to see framed moments and memories and to see things I have not yet experienced which I look forward to. I'm learning slowly that the commonplace is not necessarily cliche, but instead that it is shared experiences and moments. And, I'm learning that a great deal of joy comes from these simple, ordinary moments.

So, may your Christmas season be filled with wonderful, ordinary moments. And may you find great joy and great awe and wonder in each of them.


Ok fine, and may it also be filled with a few beautifully ornate and grand moments as well.

(images via www.normanrockwell.com and nrm.org)

oh christmas tree, oh christmas tree!

We're kicking off our fun old fashion family Christmas by heading out into the country in the old front-wheel drive sleigh to embrace the frosty majesty of the winter landscape and select that most important of Christmas symbols.

Clark W. Griswold, A Christmas Vacation

Ryan called me indian giver scrooge the week before Thanksgiving because I refused to get a Christmas tree before Turkey Day. He asked if we could have two trees in the house and I said sure. He took my response to mean that we could go get the trees immediately. I reminded him that we would not have any trees until after Thanksgiving. I wouldn't compromise. I wouldn't hear anything of an evergreen in the house before November 27th. He thought I was just being scrooge, but the truth of the matter was that a co-worker told me that her grandfather has a Christmas tree farm in Williamsburg and I had made arrangements to go the Saturday after Thanksgiving to cut down our very first Christmas tree. So on Saturday we drove to Williamsburg to get the tree! Ryan was very excited and as soon as we arrived at the farm he hopped out of the car and started surveying the grounds...


Just like in Christmas Vacation, our tree practically had a spotlight shining on it...look at the glow!

and look at the glee on Ryan's face when he found "The One"
The only remaining question was whether it would fit into our house..."Oh yea, I'm sure it will fit...it's not even that big..."

So we notified the proprietor that we had found our tree and he handed Ryan a saw to cut it down.

Ryan and dear old Mr. Bradshaw loading the tree in the tractor:

And there it is in the big green truck ready to go home! We were nervous that our tree was too small, that it might look too scrawny or small in our home. Upon getting it inside we realized that we had chosen a tree that was just as tall as it was wide. I mean, this is a fat albert of a tree. We set the tree in the middle of the front window where Ryan's grandparents always put their tree, but it stuck halfway out into our living room. We moved it to the side of the room, in a little alcove where we usually have two chairs and a small table. It fills the space perfectly! Note Ryan's astonishment at the breadth of the tree...

We were excited to have the tree up in time for the little leftovers party that we were having the Saturday after Thanksgiving. And we were excited for Greg Sceviour to be home!

More to come on the finished product...

the thanksgiving television

I woke up this morning at 7am a bit perturbed to find that my husband was gone. "Where has he gone?" I thought to myself. Oh, I know! He is making me a Thanksgiving breakfast with the delcious pumpkin pancake mix we picked up at the Fresh Market. No, no we have no eggs or milk. Upon being reminded of the fact that we really didn't have any breakfast food in the house I turned over and went back to sleep, feeling confident that Ryan could fend for himself just fine whatever he was doing.


Around 8:30 I was awakened by Ryan, jumping up and down with excitement and begging me to get out of bed and see his new television. The one he had been at Kmart waiting for since 4:30am. I sighed, said I'll see it in a minute and fell back asleep. Thirty minutes later Ryan was back and literally dragged me out of bed because I was missing the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. His little Christmas-lover heart simply could not have that. I stumbled into the den in a sleepy stooper to behold our new, gigantic television.




The process of getting the television was fairly amusing. Ryan has been dropping hints for sometime that we really should get a new tv, to which I consistently respond, "Ryan, we have a huge television that works fine." With Black Friday just around the corner, he upped his antics. This culminated with him pulling the "But we would have so much more space if the tv hung on the wall." (Actually not true, the speakers and dvd player and whatever else you need to have a functioning tv still has to sit on a stand under the tv.) So anyways, somewhere in the midst of my not really protesting or objecting, I conceded and off he went to Kmart. (See: This) And then he gloated all morning as we ate potato chips and an apple for breakfast and watched the parade.



As I write, he is watching a James Bond movie smirking and so proud of himself for finding a good deal on his tv. Oh excuse me, our tv, as he likes to point out.

thankfulness : mom + the turkey wagon

Today I am grateful for my mom who has cooked a delicious and nutritious Thanksgiving dinner for as many years as I can remember. I am also thankful that when I came home from college last year, slightly skittish around meat after taking a nutrition class that ended up being an exposé on the horrors of CAFOs, that my mom drove all the way out to Pungo to find a locally raised, hormone-free turkey. Thanks mom.

So this year the trip to find the local, cage free Thanksgiving bird was a family affair. Ryan, James, my mom and I piled into the mini-van and made the drive out to Flanagan farm this afternoon. The turkey's met their maker around 10am and by 1pm they were ready to be picked up. The turkeys were spread out on several tables in a very rustic little shed right behind the Flanagan's home.

We picked what we deemed an appropriately sized bird, put it on the check out counter, paid and put it in a garbage bag (of course). I felt like such a child, but I couldn't help but sneak around behind the shed to see the turkeys still roaming around in the land of the living. There they were in all their glory, at least until Christmas rolls around...we took bets on which one might be on our Christmas dinner table.
Ok, so maybe this is gross or disturbing, but honestly it made me feel much less freaked out than the shrink wrapped, identical blue and yellow plastic covered fowl that line grocery shelves. So here is to Barbara Kingsolver and a local turkey for Thanksgiving! And here's to my wonderful mom who always works so hard to make sure that her babies are fed healthy and delicious meals.