a walk through jonny's eyes {december views}

a guest photographer today for december views

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sounds of the season

another favorite scene from white christmas where bing sings that oh so very beautiful song.

snug and snowed in {december views}

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on this solstice, take a listen to sarah mclachlan's version of wintersong.
my heart is full of the dark and the light when i listen to this song.
i visit the dark...
tonight, i choose the light.

thank you for being out there...reading my words and looking at my images...and sharing pieces of you right back to me...or just silently reading and looking...thanks for getting it.

blessings,
me

flannel and snow {december views}

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ended up back at urgent care yesterday. they are treating me as though i might have pneumonia. so lots of rest and heating pads and a vaporizer and warm apple juice (a new one for me...but really wonderful) and antibiotics and an inhaler and all cuddled up cozy in a flannel nightgown (more about it here) with leg warmers (from a dear friend) and slippers all under a childhood quilt. we ventured out to get a tiny tree before the snow started falling again. we have several inches now, which is a true rarity around here. (which is why the three of us spent a wee bit of time outside together tonight as i wanted to see millie play in the snow as this is the most snow she has ever seen. and play she did. while i snapped photos from the glow of the backyard light and all the white. she is already snoring after that excitement and cold.) with more inches to come, we are basically snowed in (that is until the rain starts mid-day tomorrow when we will be iced in...we are so hoping that does not happen). it feels like christmas now. as millie played tonight, i thought a bit about trav, the golden we had before her. this time of year always brings up a bit of those feelings of missing, doesn't it? this version of this song makes me think of him and smile.

hope you are taking care of you...

blessings,
liz

backyard snow {december views}

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and since we've no place to go (except the post office...please let me get to the post office tomorrow), let it snow.

funny how things work {december views}

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i have never liked oatmeal. no. would never eat it as a child. but my brother...matt loved it. he ate instant quaker oats, cinnamon and raisin i believe (the kind in the purple packaging), every morning before school and on the weekends (unless mom made french toast or dad took us to the country bake shop for doughnuts). at some point, making it for him became my job. i would hold my breath as i stirred the hot water into the oats. i hated that smell and that paste-like texture.

with this freezing weather and the neverending chest cold of 2008, i have been craving mostly warm food...especially in the morning. i usually eat cheerios though...sometimes toast. but we bought irish steel cut oats for me last week because i just wanted something warm...i thought i could try. so today, i did. and as the snow was falling in that hope tomorrow is a snow day sort of way, i stirred the maple syrup and brown sugar into the oats and splash of milk and the smell took me back to a kitchen of my childhood and the simple task of being a big sister. and i thought about how if it had been this time of year back in that kitchen and we had been home for a snow day, kenny and dolly's "once upon a christmas" would have been the album playing in the background. in that house, we had speakers throughout, even in the kitchen. "christmas to remember" is one of my favorites from the album (of course, if you are brave enough to want to watch the video from the kenny and dolly christmas special circa 1984...which i, of course, watched when it was on when i was eight...then check it out [how i wish i could remember why they are in this setting for this song])

and in that "i do not like green eggs and ham" way that lifes so often goes, i loved having irish oatmeal for breakfast. imagine that...might have been the heaping spoon of brown sugar. maybe some morning soon i can play at being a big sister again and fix a bowl for my brother...