Today is Christmas Day if you are Orthodox. I’m up before anybody. I’ve wrapped up the last of the presents and looked for a while at Bored Panda and am lazily finishing my wonderful morning coffee before starting the day.

There’s snow finally and it looks like a wonderland outside. A few days before first Christmas, there was the first snow of the year. We took full festive advantage of this and got out the cross-country skis. We skied along the railroad tracks deciding on a Christmas tree. We picked out 2; one for our house, and one for where the employees live. It was a difficult ski back with having to pull a tree with Paxy sitting on top of it. Here’s a picture of Hugo going along…

And here’s our lovely Christmas tree, just felled. Paxy is an excellent tree-rider, and instinctively jumped on it the second it was down.

In the snow, Paxy pretty much always has a snow-snack in hand.

This next picture is one from the Christmas train that we took. I love this picture of Cassidy, she is so beautiful. And that’s Pax with her.

I’ve been honest with the boys about Santa. I’ve told them that it’s a lovely magical story and that it’s fun to pretend. All of our stockings come from Santa and we all play along. I tell them that lots of other kids don’t know the secret that Santa’s gifts don’t actually come from him and to help keep the secret. When we were riding in the Christmas train, it stopped so that this Santa could come on and Ho-ho-ho with us. Pax yelled out, “Santa’s not real!” But then when he saw Santa dressed up and looking magical and amazing, Paxy’s eyes lit up with amazement that he might be looking at someone filled with Christmas magic afterall.

On first Christmas, we went to LaLa and Da’s house. Here we all are! It’s difficult to get an amazing picture of everyone when you’re in a group, especially when the camera is doing the countdown all on its own. We only did one shot because there was too many other things happening at the time.

This next picture struck me as interesting. It’s a shot of us all preparing for the shot above. We were all going for a walk and came upon this fallen old tree. What made us all decide that this was a good spot and all gravitate towards it? It is an interesting tree, but it makes me think about animalistic we all are. I know we were taking a picture, but I feel like we all wanted to walk over to it anyway. Peaches is the only one sticking to the path.

Here below is Paxy, overwhelmed and exhausted by Christmas already. It’s Christmas morning. He was sooooo grumpy. You can’t tell, but his body is mostly shoved underneath the couch in this picture.

Paxy recovered. It’s breakfast with Caleb. We’re all so happy that he made it out from under the couch. He’ll go back under there, metaphorically, before the hour is out.

“Did she just say……..”

It’s Christmas Climbing Wall! Here’s Hugo and Caleb. Pax wanted nothing at all to do with this.

This post has been in draft form for a very long time. I’m not happy with it still. My wording feels off and it just stops dead at the end like some stupid post. But I’d like to move on and tell myself that the point of this isn’t to be amazing.

Christmas was fun and tiring somehow. I think I enjoyed it, and I’m also glad that it’s over and we’re making our way into spring. Spring is always exciting with the starting of the greenhouses and seedlings and the thought of people moving and living around here more. Outside flip-flops between mud season and freezing. It’s the time of year that’s in between. It’s the last stretch of winter. Peaches is still asleep and dreaming and looking old. But she wakes up every year when the season finally shifts. She shakes out her old dog body and looks forward to another year of hunting rats and gophers. This is the last of our sleepy days.

I hope you guys had a happy Christmas and winter. We all miss you and love you.