chanda's knitted hat and foodie pics from morgana

chanda finished her hat with some beautiful yarn korrina first got for us from the yarn company. it's stonehedge fiber mills crazy, made with random yarn ends all spun together.

it's extremely pretty and extremely comfy . . knit on straight needles and then sewed up.

 here are several neighborhood pics from morgana . . 

 the door outside of her apartment . . 

 and several dinner pics . . (with her valentine's tulip) . . 

 red cabbage and delicious french cheese . . 

and a lunch pic from shakespeare and company, the bookstore/cafe just around the corner from her school.

 salmon on a sesame seed bagel . . 

 with rhubarb pie for dessert?

 a room in her school where she goes for quiet time when she needs to study before class.

and chanda's and my breakfast for the day: oatcakes, lemon curd, green tea and dickens . . i would like to read a tale of two cities with her, but she hasn't been very receptive. she made fun of his brilliant first paragraph . . it's classic! she said i would chastise her for such a long run-on sentence; not if it's that well written, i said!

finding quiet moments on st. nicholas day

our days are incredibly busy. we try and grab quiet moments when we can. we listened to emma for a little while in the morning before morgana and chanda ran off to babysitting and a ballet lesson, respectively.

 they then came home to a lunch of soup and roasted chestnuts (which were found in their shoes for st. nicholas day along with some chocolates). these chestnuts were the best we've ever had: so fresh and sweet.

 i ran errands (grocery and christmas shopping) and came home in time to listen to jean from waldorf inspired learning speak about simplifying the holiday time (!!).

dinner was wild salmon from trader joe's, who had a good price for their fish.

our nighttime reading for advent . . 

panettone, knitting projects . . and harry potter

 i've still been enjoying panettone . . i really love the holiday time.

chanda finished her mint kiss cowl,

and we're making napkins for our friends who we will be seeing in a week. the colors make me think of hawaii which is where they used to live.

i've been reading harry potter with chanda . . i gave her the same option i gave morgana after reading book six: that if they wanted to go on with book seven i would. book six is so intense, i guess, it's difficult to leave it for a year. morgana opted to wait, but chanda has requested to continue. she says we'll reread the book again for her next birthday. i at least asked her to wait until after the holidays and now it's difficult to put down.

a cooler day

 it finally went down into the 50's today. it's been 60/61 since the weekend; very unchristmaslike.

morgana has been helping one of chanda's friends with reading and spelling. she put together a game this morning before going over.

 the light outside today was beautiful. 

i walked out with her to refill her metro card and to pick up yarn from lionbrand for chanda. 

she's had two orders for fingerless gloves that she has to finish by thursday afternoon. the colors are so pretty and the lionbrand superwash is so soft . . 

 and then i went home for lunch with chanda . . 

 and then out again . . 

to meet my friend jeanette at vicoletto's. she had been in town christmas shopping and was hungry for lunch, but i just had dessert. we'll be too busy to see each other next week so it was nice to chat before christmas comes.

then i finally made it over to home depot for a water filter . . (i love that store) . . the light was still beautiful as the sun set . . 

bicycling again . . finally

i finally got out bicycling today with morgana and chanda. it was hot, but fun.

 we stopped just past pier 40 to check out the free kayaking . . 

 a lot of people were out . . 

 hot and hazy . . 

and the sailing ships were out . . 

 the yachts and sailboats have returned to the battery park city harbor.

we read roger lancelyn green's robin hood . .

 we've always called this area "the willows," due to the enormous willow trees that shaded the area. however, today it was more bare and sunny. this willow tree is half dead, and the one to it's right, which you can't see in this picture, had more than half of it's branches trimmed. hurricane sandy fall out . . this neighborhood was flooded (even more so than our's . . the new 1, 2, 3 train station is still boarded up from flood damage) and i imagine the soil changed drastically from the sea water.
 povero trees . .

 we rode home and i made korrina her ravioli from the prior night (which she had missed due to her play). she worked today at the restaurant, came home for dinner, and then went right out again to the theatre. morgana worked on her roman history essay . .

 and chanda included "latin phrases" in her lesson book. greg and i dusted all the bookshelves . . which entailed taking all the books down and dusting each one off . . we were all sneezing from the dust that went flying around . .

they look so big lounging in their new reading corner . .

the second ice skating lesson

we had ice skating again today, and i still hadn't found chanda a pair of skates that fit her well. the result was that her feet hurt after two hours of skating. maybe i'll try ebay . .

sasha cohen was practicing again . .

i tried to sneak a few movies this time . .


she's enchanting to watch. you don't want to take your eyes off of her.


she just glides and flows in and out of the crowd.

 chanda saved two bugs today . . !

the first one was a fly which i was so lucky to see . . i didn't have the privilege of seeing the second . .

a new set of paintings was placed out to dry today in the westbeth courtyard,

and the garbage pile on our sidewalk grew a couple of feet.

i sat outside chanda's class today to be able to speak with her teacher afterwards and invite her to the nutcracker show. i ended up talking with two other moms about yarn and knitting projects, and then janet showed up with yves to pick up gael.

xena and madeline cuddled on chanda's bed this afternoon,

and morgana finished cleaning out the dollhouse. i had forgotten about how sweet the clothes and accessories were that they had made.

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this evening morgana and chanda helped me pick out pictures for korrina's birthday table . . and chanda wrapped her gift.