magrilless

Festivities

We started December with a hunting trip: we came,

we saw,

we conquered!

And then we pruned…

We met with the big man.

We entered a gingerbread construction contest.

And we danced in the lights!

(Plus a few holiday theater productions, a few food-rich parties, some shopping and wrapping and cooking, some crafts, snow playing, and singing, and general cozy good feelings.)

Almost Merry Christmas!

It’s been an entire decade since this little turkey entered the world. Ten years of explorations and songs and curiosity and books and laughter and creativity and red-headed shenanigans. Ten years of feeling proud and loving this little girl.

We’ve been doing lots of celebrating! There’s been a slumber party with the core crew,

Special permission to have breakfast at school,

And a scavenger hunt (without adult supervision except for a meet-up in the middle) that ranged over 2 miles in the snow with various puzzles and codes that needed to be cracked. (They nailed it!)

Plus a special dinner of tortellini, mixed berries, and buttered green beans with pumpkin cheesecakes for dessert (menu by the birthday girl).

Happy birthday, Maggie Ione!

Butterflies, Ghosts, and Egg on My Face

A while ago — way back when Tessa was walking 2.5 mi home from German kindergarten every day — she started listening to a podcast called “Story Pirates.” They take stories written by children and turn them into fully produced radio stories. (Think old timey radio where there was the guy at the other microphone with the slide whistle and the cow bell and the coconuts for horse hooves.)

One day Tessa asked to write a piece to send in. We hemmed and hawed for awhile because we didn’t want her to be disappointed not hearing her story on the radio. (How many submissions must they get everything day!?) Eventually the grownups relented — for the fun of it, we emphasized.

Well, color me surprised when I got a response from the podcast written directly to Tessa!

She was ecstatic! (And fully rubbed it in my face that I had told her they’d be too busy and inundated with submissions to respond in any way. They’ve made a loyal listener out of me now!)

We’re really proud of Tessa, that she knew what she wanted to create and went for it!

You Go, Girl!

This fall, Maggie has been part of an after-school club called Girls on the Run. It’s an empowering program where they learn about encouraging each other, standing up to bullies, asserting themselves, supporting other women, and in the midst they train for a 5K.

Saturday was the state-wide event (luckily held in Durango so we didn’t have to travel) where sooooo many 3rd-5th graders gathered (buzzed, flitted, cartwheeled, and twittered) around with parents and siblings and grandparents and friends and sponsors and coaches.
Then we ran! Maggie let me run with her and a friend, occasionally holding up my phone blaring some jams, punching them when I saw a slug bug (I didn’t say “no tag-backs” but they had to catch me!), listening to them proudly kvetch about how much work this was!

They decided together that their first goal was to finish; secondarily they wanted to do so between 40 and 50 minutes. And although they didn’t say it out loud, they also wanted to cheer on as many people as they could reach. Everyone we passed got a “good job!” or a high-five or an “aye Chihuahua” (part of a cheer they learned from their coaches — inside joke I guess).