Blog a la Cart

We’ve been steeped in family time. My parents and sister departed Saturday afternoon, and then we had two waves of friends come through for a visit. I took the girls to FROZEN for the third time yesterday. (They are obsessed. You should see the family sing-a-longs that happen on the hour, every hour, chez Cart. We’ve got the entire score memorized. And I must say, I love that the movie has female leads, and that the message is ultimately about the power of sisterly love. An awesome deviation from the hetero-romantic Disney norm. It’s not perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, but the music is wonderful and the overall message is good. So I’m picking my battles.) James is just beginning his busy work season, so while he hides up in the office in the barn buried in essays, the girls and I have been doing lots of movie watching, and costume trunking, and generally lounging around the house.

We have zero plans for New Year’s Eve (like the parents of preschoolers that we are). I imagine that James’ and I will count down to midnight working on our yearly photo video to wrap up 2013. Last night I spent two hours paging through images, and only made it to April. I’ve got lots more to sort before James can begin to work his montage magic. Last year we took 10,000 images. This year? 20,000. Granted that includes the work I was hired to do, but still pretty overwhelming. Poor sweet computer. She is running on memory fumes. (And yes, I have invested in external hard drives because, duh.)

All that is to say, I’ll be sharing some images from our Christmas before fully closing the books on this year. First up? Our Christmas Eve Gingerbread House bonanza! I love that James made the dough, my dad constructed a gingerbread house modeled after Cartwheel Farm, and Kimmy worked her decorating talents while I helped as sous decorator. Kimmy created a Graham Cracker house for Sunny to decorate, and Courtland tackled gingerbread men. And Momar supervised. She is the Queen Supervisor. It was a wonderful way to spend Christmas Eve Day with my family, huddled in our tiny kitchen over gum drops and icing. Truly a team effort.