Duendesday!

{life with a curious and crazy 10 yr old}

Duende was very excited to see some active but light snowing when she woke up today. Just a coating, mostly in the crevices and paths of the grass but a few icicles to really make her happy. She’s playing Parcheesi with Daddy right now but then we are making pizza’s soon for dinner. Hit the Farmer’s Market yesterday so she could get her Pumpkin Vine Mango Lassi fix (yum!).

These days she’s obsessed with the Winter Solstice already. Somehow that seasonal jumpstart affects her, too. The other day she looked up a recipe for gingerbread cookies, set them up in the refrigerator overnight, got up early and baked them/frosted them – she was determined. She’s been building Winter dioramas and in lieu of no Santa in our life, she’s made a holiday dog character named Thanta Paws (which she dressed J up as). She’s building a cardboard gingerbread house (and people, and paperchains) and is already making her presents for us.

We’re seasonal and witchy people. We’ll put up our tree right before the Solstice and take it down on Imbolc to celebrate the change of the season – lights and love during the coldest and darkest shift. On Imbolc we usually have a lovely Scotch tasting party (so sad that it will not be happening this coming Winter) that gets us altogether in the midst of the dark season, just to get us through until the Vernal Equinox (which still certainly does not feel like ‘Spring’ yet to many – just the whisper of worms waking and maple sugar making). We’re not Thanksgiving people, for many years we have celebrated Indigenous People’s Day on the 4th Thursday of November instead – it seems now the rest of the ‘holiday schedule’ has caught up with us and there is a separate Indigenous People’s Day and the entire month of November is also nominated towards this celebration (except for said ‘Thanksgiving’). That said, we’ll still eat a turkey because it’s what’s on sale and we all love turkey and I bet the Native Americans ate turkey long before the fundamentalist Pilgrims ever did. She made a hat and beak to dress Josh up as the turkey.

She’s a peach and loves a good celebration regardless of the ‘holiday rules’ around here. Any chance to decorate and eat fancy food and be together.