The Week After Christmas

We didn't really have any plans for the week after Christmas.  I figured that the second week of school vacation would be kind of slow and lazy and that by the end of the week, we would be ready for our regular schedule.

To my great surprise, Tim ended up taking off a few days to just stay home, hang out and get a few jobs done around the house.  It was so nice to have what felt like an extended weekend to do a few things that we always talk about but never do and also to hash out some home repair and maintenance details.

Our first order of business was a morning hike.  It was actually pretty cold that morning and we really needed our hats and gloves.  Cate and Timmy made it around the whole trail.  Cate made it with no whining and complaining, Timmy made it up the mountain without whining...not so much down.

Next to Cate, Zeke got the award for happiest camper.  He doesn't usually get to go out on a hike first thing in the morning.  I guess that's a good day for a dog.

Timmy's main complaint during the hike was that he was hungry (as usual), so after the 45 minute hike, we stopped for bagels on the way home.  We also picked out new paint colors for the outside of our house before settling in for an afternoon rest.  

One of my goals for this winter is to actually do something with all of the citrus fruit in our back yard.  Since mexican food is often on the menu, I do use a lot of lemons and limes, but so far, we have not used any oranges.

 I saw a small, manual juicer at the grocery store and decided to pick it up so that the kids could help to squeeze some orange juice and maybe some lemonade.

The oranges that we have don't really come apart in sections, so they are kind of hard to eat, but they are very juicy.

 See that orange juice in the bottom of the juicer?  It took about 30 oranges to make that.  Each of us got about two sips in a cup.  Fun afternoon activity.  Not doing it again especially considering that we don't even drink orange juice around here.  Maybe next year we will think about investing in a better juicer so that it isn't so labor intensive!

After the juice experiment, Cate and Timmy went up to her room to work on beading necklaces.  Cate got a beading kit from Uncle Rusty for Christmas and she LOVES making jewelry with it.  Timmy was pretty intent on his work too although I had to give Cate the stink eye to get her to allow Timmy to touch her precious beads.

I'm not sure what Timmy is looking at here.  Maybe Cate's black striped leggings, navy blue dress and heart patterned shirt.  I would like to say that she dressed herself and that we were allowing her to make choices or something like that. Actually Tim picked that out for her because he was, and still is, convinced that it looks good like that.

This morning we were rudely jolted back into the school routine, but it was a little bit easier than usual because we are all rested up and relaxed from a fun two weeks at home.