eva's family's gifts, a mint kiss cowl, and a variations class

 eva's family made the sweetest christmas gift this year: a mushroom ornament. the children painted many of them and sent them off to family and friends around the world. we all really love it.

 i also enjoyed reading the english and german family letter they sent out this year. it was nice to see morgana make an appearance in it since she visited them in september. exciting!

 eva also sent a stone a woman at the holiday market had painted. the colors are just beautiful.

 we had a delicious breakfast of oatmeal and cream and apples this morning.

 and morgana began working on her epiphany yarn gift: 

 a mint kiss cowl that korrina designed for the yarn company when she worked for them. the yarn is soft and thick and was especially made for the store.

 chanda was working on a monday waldorf class assignment. i'm actually not sure what she was finishing! 

 i ate my little mouse that chanda gave me for christmas from the burdick chocolate store. 

 almost done!

 after getting dinner started i headed over to the ballet school to see chanda's variations class . . it's still so cold and dark outside!

my friend ro came to watch this evening also.

 they've been working on the cygnet dance from swan lake.

working on being in sync . .

after the variations class, chanda had a half hour private session with her teacher.

they've been working on the aurora variation from act i.

the never ending work on turns . . 

phew . . enough of that . . 

checking the dance online. they're using the royal ballet's version with lauren cuthbertson.

finally finished for the day . . 

and ready to go home.

old letters

my mom asked me to clean out one of the downstairs closets. included in that cleaning out was a box with some old pictures and letters from when i was in college . . (and some old diaries from when i was a teenager! even an old story i had written when 10 years old! morgana and chanda were very amused!) chanda has been obsessed with sorting these old letters of mine. i keep putting them into piles that I can understand, and then i come back to them only to find that she has totally re-arranged, re-sorted, re-filed . . all of them!!! everything! i've given up . . let go . . washed my hands of them. they're hers to work with. morgana said to me . . this is how you corresponded? you didn't do email? (what's really funny to me is that yesterday at the coop i ran into an old friend who i really hadn't seen in 10 years. we decided to exchange phone numbers and both of us whipped out our cell phones . . as she is trying to figure out how to put my number in, she says . . wouldn't pencil and paper be so much quicker? yes, i answered, we didn't have these toys last time we saw each other, did we?!)