The Spirit of Christmas Past

We had a nice outing today; we visited a Wisconsin icon, called Old World Wisconsin. It's in a beautiful location, heavily buried in pines. Today was a good day to visit The Spirit of Christmas Past, as it had warmed up 30 degrees from the past couple of days--yes it was 33 degrees, heat wave! The grounds were spectacular, blanketed in pure white snow---kind of reminded me of pure white smooth fondant--fondant for the earth:) For those who haven't been there, Old World Wisconsin has homesteads and buildings from the first settlers of the 1800's, with actors dressed in period costumes teaching the history of their particular area. And we saw some beautiful lambs too! Then the last building we went into was designed with less "boring" stuff (from a kid perspective)---Father Christmas was there--hot cocoa was available for the guests (ok hot water with stuff in it--but hot cocoa sounds a lot more festive:) and craft tables set up for the kids. I personally was hoping it would be decorated to be more festive; however, they do keep Old World Wisconsin as authentic as possible, which means people back then didn't have time for festivities--for the most part, they may have gone to church on Christmas, done a small amount of celebration--but Christmas like any other day was another day of very hard labor. Notice those beautiful natural wreaths pictured above? We're going to do that ourselves, maybe next Christmas, with materials we gather from the woods ourselves (though I will add red or Christmas plaid ribbon:).
http://oldworldwisconsin.wisconsinhistory.org/

Sledding in Our Backyard

The girls braved the elements yesterday (too young to be wimps like their mama:) The temperature during the day reached a high of 4 degrees with below zero windchills. I was fully expecting to spend 10 minutes getting them bundled up, and for them to be in 5 minutes later--but I was surprised they stayed outside a good 15 to 20 minutes; and they had a lot of fun! We have a nice sized lot; and our backyard is gently sloped--but that works really well when the snow turns to ice--those sleds can MOVE!

Christmas Fun

Little Angel (5.5) is growing so quickly! Yesterday she decided to go outside to go make a snowman---in the past she's had problems rolling the snow to form the balls---so a grownup has always had to do that part for her. This year, she went out all by herself, and created this VERY adorable snowman all by herself! I was so proud of her. (I was also surprised she could lift the snowballs up to form the body--this snow we have right now is HEAVY!). She then came inside and asked me for a carrot--I felt like a terrible mom, I didn't have any left--but she was a good sport and took a piece of celery:)

The next project was also completely done by her. I handed her the gingerbread house kit; and that was it--she tore open the box, went into the kitchen for utensils to work with --I literally said nothing to her and gave her ZERO instructions--in fact, I did not even look at her creation until her project was complete! And I would say the results are spectacular! (Fairy Girl assisted too, she tested some of the candies, true to her sweet nature:)

I'm Dreaming of a White Wet Slippery Heavy Slush Christmas....

Doesn't this *look* pretty? It's not--it's the heaviest snow I've seen--it's white, wet, heavy slippery slush--and it's still going! I attempted to shovel a path just so we could get Piper out to his kennel, and that took a lot of strength and effort! It's THAT heavy---the picture with the shed shows our normally tall berry bush, collapsed to the ground! I'm glad I found Angel some new snow pants this week; I know they'll be out there (for about 10 minutes and then they want in--it takes longer to get them bundled up, than the time they actually spend out there:) J called and said he saw a school bus full of kids in the ditch, he has no doubt a few kids were tossed from their seats (with no belts on the busses)--AND listen to this:) on his way to work, he sees a guy who rides his bike to work, EVERY day; and today was no exception!

Gingerbread House Christmas

After our Saturday night freeze at the the town square tree lighting; we headed back to our town to get some cocoa at The Gingerbread House. Since it is an old renovated farm house--it is tight in there (and it's a popular place). And as expected, it was crowded (we were hoping to sip cocoa by the fire place, maybe tonight when I meet a high school girl friend there before band:) Anyway, my little Fairy Girl had run upstairs to the craft boutique, and I discovered they converted one of the craft rooms into a BEAUTIFUL bar and winery. Since no one was in there, we decided to have our cocoas in there--the entire room was hand painted (pictured in one of the photos). Would be a PERFECT spot for a girl friend get-together--too bad my girl friends live an hour away:)

Christmas Canvas--first snowfall

Bath time fun....

for Mama!

Christmas Art

Holly and Jolly

First Time Floating...

As we were driving to the parade line up, Little Fairy put her hat over her eyes and said, "look mommy, lights are out!." And then I looked back a little later, and she was sound asleep:)

A few of us went out to dinner after the parade--mmmmm banana creme pie for dessert!!!






The girls got to participate in their first TWO parades this year. At the end of the summer they marched with the doggy park group in the Rome Parade; and today they rode on the band wagon in the Menomonee Falls Christmas parade--it was chilly (but in the 40's)--the parade was after dark, so everything was so pretty and festive. I think the girls had a really nice time!!