Church & Chocolate: The Easter Recap

So totally missed the Stream of Consciousness Sunday post last week when all y'all were seriously on the edge of your seats waiting to hear about the reunion.  But I was still reunionioning, people!  The ladies had one last night of antipasto and drinks before everyone returned to real life.

Determined to avoid that whole strike-while-the-iron-is-cold phenomenon this week, I'm going to go ahead and give you an Easter recap so that your teeth can ache too when you see all the sugar involved in the celebrating.

Ready?  Here goes.

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Top Ten Observations about Easter 2011

10) Yet again I did not get my act together:  did not produce handmade & hand-decorated sugar cookies, origami paper carrots, or homemade hot cross buns. Til next year, then.

9)  No one likes hot cross buns.  Scratch last item off list.

8)  Filling Easter baskets without buying big-ticket items like a Wii console or a pony means either 1) small pieces of plastic junk they do NOT need but are wildly attracted to for 5 minutes or 2) going with the 99% sugar, 1% high fructose corn syrup solution.  We went with option 2 this year. Oh, and pencils.  Easter-themed pencils.

7)  They can spend the morning eating sugary items.  They can be offered cookies with brunch,  and chocolate rabbits until they bleed brown, and still at the end of Easter dinner one of them is guaranteed to ask me in a stage whisper "is there going to be any dessert?"

6)  You know an Easter sermon will stay with you all year long when it includes a Wittgenstein quote that moves you to tears.

5)  Six year old boys will still wear what their mother says, bless their cotton socks. Even if it means [gasp!] a sweater vest.  [what? pictures, you say?  well that would assume that the Nilsens could keep their act together from one Major Event to another & keep track of the cable to transfer pictures.  But I'm really not annoyed about it.  Not at all.]

4)  Matching Easter dresses makes the daunting task of raising girls pretty much worth it. [picture, you say?  see above.]

3)  Girls matching? Intentional.  That the entire family wore light blue? Vaguely silly and totally unplanned. But kinda cute.  [Really.  stop asking about the pictures.  It's becoming a sore point around here.]

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Gah! Just like that, we are finished our five minutes, people, and me only at Number Three.  Sorry 'bout that.  I'll just let you get back to finishing your own Easter celebrations (or not).  I myself am heading to finish off those Malted Milk Robins Eggs.  Arguably the best Low Quality High Chemical Candy Product on the market.

Everything Good Between Men and Women

"...has been written in mud and butter and barbeque sauce."

This was the beginning of the poem my husband gave me on Valentines Day.

You might be sick of Valentines by now.  The holiday, full of its chocolatey, stuffed-bear and balloon cynicism draws to a close tonight, and I have a dispeptic belly-full of cheap jewelry ads and schmaltzy marriage proposal stories. 

But the mystic in me finds it hard to hate a day that remembers how central love is to our existence.  Remembers that all the world for love may die. [Ben Jonson] Love, in all of its iterations, is reason to exist.  Ok - a bright pink stuffed bear has not nearly enough gravitas to make it real.  I'd submit that a half-pound of dark chocolate sea salt caramels just might. 

But love is real.  Realer than anything else that drives us.  Here is what I know, today, about love:

Love is the husband who calls his wife driving home from the city in the middle of the night, just to keep her awake over the miles.

Love is the husband who jumps up later that night to get a bowl for a feverish wife who feels like she's about to hurl.

Love is the husband who makes the kids heart-shaped waffles on Valentine's morning and lets his wife sleep until 8.10 when he absolutely-has-to-really-must-leave.

Love is the husband who posts a poem that he knows will break his wife's heart in a million (mostly good) ways as a gift, right out there for all of Facebook to see.

Love is the husband who leaves work after a quiet, miserable call from his sick wife.  Leaves work, arrives home with laptop in hand and plops himself on the floor to build a marble maze with three cabin-feverish kids.

It wasn't your standard Valentine celebration at the Yellow House this year.  But oh, it was filled with love!  The kind of love that makes days, weeks and months into rich and full lives.  Not happy perfect filled-with-glitter-and-champagne-and-swanky-dates lives, but lives filled with Quality.

Surely we can't hate a holiday that celebrates that.

Cookie Houses, The Slacker Version

I am ignoring the emails that scream LAST CHANCE FOR FREE SHIPPING! ORDER NOW OR DIE!!!!!!

I am not making the gingerbread cookie dough that was on the docket for the evening.

I am not even wiping the freezer out after a tragic exploded-bottle-of-carbonated-beverage incident.

Instead I am telling y'all about a funny little tradition that sneaked up on me, and became my favorite much like the quietest kid in the class makes his way into the teacher's heart.

Cookie houses.  I know.  I know:  the minute I type that phrase your insides clench up like they do in an particularly mortifying episode of The Office, and you think gaaaaaaaaah. no.  NO COOKIE HOUSES.  ARE YOU INSANE?  

I'm not.  Really I'm not.  I'm nowhere near an over-achiever, and my perfectionist streak has been handily beaten out of me by 3 kids, and old house, and an extremely phlegmatic husband. So.

We are talking cookie houses of the non-threatening variety.  Cookie houses made of graham crackers, and Royal Icing.  Now hang on, don't start hyperventilating on me.  Royal icing is simply that really hard, bright white icing that they stick gingerbread houses together with, and I'm here to tell you [I'll whisper, in case Martha Stewart's listening in]:  it's really easy to make.

Here's the super secret recipe:  3 egg whites, 1 lb of confectioner's sugar (icing sugar, for all my Euro pals),  and 1 tsp Cream of Tartar.   Whip it.   And I'm not kidding - you have to whip the heck out of it.  Like, way way past the nervous 'is it getting stiff yet?' stage.  You really want it to be, well, stiff. (I'm such a juvenile.  Am I really the only one sniggering when reading these directions?)

So you take a graham cracker, snap it in half, then cement the two halves together with a dab of the icing.  That's your first wall.  Do it again, that's your 2nd.  Glue them parallel to each other on a paper plate/fancy platter/piece of cardboard with more globs of icing,  then finish your house shape with two single squares of cracker.  Snap another in half,  and use the two pieces for a leaning-against each other roof (see, a fancy blogger would call it Cantilevered.  ooooh.)  And you're done.

Really.  Let it dry - a few hours maybe.  Yesterday I needed to speed it up so I stuck it in my oven at 100 degrees, and it worked a treat.  Then, give your kiddos all the leftover icing, a bunch of different candies & sugar cereal pieces, and let 'em have at it.  My rule was 'no candy in your mouth until your house is done'.  This left the 3 year old's house very minimalist, and gave her a head start on 'tasting'.

Do it with just your kids, or do it with 11 like we did yesterday.  It really is the simplest, happiest little exercise that makes you feel virtuously domestic, them happy that they got to play with frosting and make a house, and everyone a little bit cheerful-er about all this holiday nuttiness we get into.

Try it.  You won't be sorry.  (Unless the royal icing gets in your shag carpet.  Then you will be sorry.  But you should already be sorry that you believed it was back in fashion. So. There you have it.)

Thankful: for Family, Trees, and Friends

In the middle of handing out mini-Snickers and Reeses Cups this Halloween, I was busy snipping pieces of kraft paper into a vague sort of tree outline:

It's our Thankful Tree.  I ran across the idea somewhere in the blogosphere last year, and it was a big hit here in the Yellow House.  The concept is simple:  each night, we go around the table and each family member names one thing they're thankful for.  If certain 2nd graders insist, they are given rights to the coveted brown Sharpie marker to write their own leaf.

The 2010 tree was extremely prolific:  as the leaves tumbled off the oaks, maples and poplars in our backyard, the paper leaves grew and grew on the Thankful Tree.  Some of my happiest moments this month have been craning my neck to check out all the funny little things my kids are grateful for.  Except, not so funny:  many of the adults' and kids' leaves turn up with some version of  'grandparents' or 'my friends.'



Ahh, friends.   Today on Classic Play I am guest posting all about a Friends Thanksgiving - the meaning of a holiday spent with The Other Kind of Family.   Let us never forget the gift of our families, crazy as they might be, but also?  Keep those friendships on your Thankful Tree.  There's nothing like 'em.

Valentines, Yellow House Style

I've mentioned before how much fun we have here at the Yellow House marking the seasons, and taking time to celebrate the small joys and bright spots of our days. Valentine's Day is certainly one of those chances: we've had a table full of felt, googly eyes, ribbon and construction paper for weeks, as we each worked on projects for friends, far away family, and for each other.




(Doesn't mean that kept me from staying up until 1.30 the night before glueing together the kids' Valentine's cards, or from resorting the the card aisle at Target for Torbjorn's. Sigh.)

I limit it to a box, one storage container. All things hearts cupids and luuuurrve that can fit into the 32 gallon container make up our Valentines Box, and it's heralded with great joy each February 1st.

We repurpose a few old Christmas lanterns still hanging about, and make dinner time special with candlelight.



This year, we had a fancy Valentine's Tea Party with five of Cecilie's friends. Our guests were asked to bring valentines for each other, and to wear pretty dresses. They crafted sparkly butterflies, they curled their pinkies around their tea cups, and swirled colored sugar into their peppermint tea. It was all very grown-up, and very sweet indeed.

The Worst Christmas Ever

For the record, today was not it.  The Worst Christmas, I mean.  I see I left a few of you with that impression.

Nope: for the record, the Official Worst Christmas Ever was December 2005. 

You see, in July that year we'd bought a house.  Built in 1920, a yellow house, with a front porch wide enough for rockers, with old wood floors, and a long, full-of-promised-adventures backyard.  Inside, there was much renovation required, but we were full of confidence that having redone a small cottage in England we could take on a large single family home.  We were so full of confidence, in fact, that we invited my husband's entire family for Christmas.  Invited them to share Christmas with us in our new home.

You are probably already shaking your head knowingly.  You and our parents.

November arrived with cold winds blowing, the heating and hot water turned off in the house and funds rapidly dwindling.  My self-employed husband was taking time off from our business, trying desperately to refinish the floors so we could install the kitchen so we could re-connect the plumbing so we could move in the furniture and and and.... then our pediatrician raised the red flag about the lead.  The lead in the paint on the woodwork  that we were trying to refinish. We needed to replace the windows so that our children, our very small & vulnerable-to-lead-poisoning children (3 and 9 mos at the time) would be safe in our home.

Told that the windows couldn't go in before the new year, we knew the jig was up.  We locked up the charming old yellow house, drove away, and intended never to return  (at least Never Until The Spring).

This meant Christmas in my parents' home, where we were living with our 2 small children, container-full of furniture and our small business.  Imagine breaking the news to your parents that not only will you not be moving out (O Long Awaited Day), but that they would be sharing Christmas with a house full of Norwegians.  Only, it turns out it was just news to us.  They'd seen the writing on the woodwork (as it were) and booked last-minute tickets to San Francisco to stay with my brother in his studio apartment.  With his 11 month old baby daughter.

My husband's parents, sister, her two boys, his brother and his daughter all arrived about a week before Christmas.  I'd gone back to work - a horrible retail job, but a job where they would have me back at a moment's notice to fund new windows - and was working long hours in the heart of DC.  

On the 22nd, I arrived home from work and heard a strange barking cough from my infant son.  Hmm, said I.  Hmm, said my father. (Did I mention he's our pediatrician??)  By 10pm I was told we needed to head to the ER:  bad case of croup.  I spent the night at Howard County General, trying to console a baby boy who'd weaned to a bottle only 3 weeks before (therefore no mommy+boob=comforting.)

I had a rare day off the next day, and took my in-laws' rental car to pick up a Christmas present from the store. And got towed.  So in a month where I was working retail to pay for a floor, I got to pay $200 to get the rental out of the tow-lot so that I could return it to the airport.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day actually passed without much drama.  They are a lovely family, my in-laws, and beautifully skilled at carrying on as if nothing was seriously amiss.  This is not one of my skills.  My father in law actually looked up at me that night and said "Kirsten!  Why are you walking around with your shoulders up at your ears?  Are you freezing?"  No.  Turns out that's how I look when things are falling apart around me.

That Christmas week was also the week when my sister in law had to tell her family that she would be divorcing her husband, father to her two boys.  That was a really fun night too.

It was not an unmitigated disaster.  There was much accomplished, much wine drunk, many conversations held late into the night. The Norwegians even managed to find the right shade of paint for the interior and paint all the rooms in the house.

Looking back at that fateful holiday, I can scarcely believe we're here again, actually doing Christmas with the Norwegians.  Doing it right this time, with sanded floors, furniture installed, and running hot water.

What I notice most of all in looking back was that no one counseled us on what a mess we were making of our lives.  Neither set of parents chose that Christmas to tell us that we'd screwed up big time.  Both families, especially our parents, worked hard that Christmas to let us know that we were loved unconditionally, and that no matter what train wrecks happened in our own lives, it would never keep us from the love that a family offers.  That our families offer.

This Christmas, I am deeply grateful to our parents, both sets of them.  Without them, we wouldn't have the life, and all of its blessings, that I can be thankful for today. 

Yesterday I posted about choosing joy.  Amidst the pain that year, amidst the disappointment of so much, we chose joy.   I don't in any way discount all the heartache that traveled along with it, but we chose the joy.

Simplicity, the Holiday Version

One of my favorite blogs recently is SimpleKids, which is an offshoot of SimpleMom. Both are awesome, but SimpleKids has so much that's relevant to my life right now.

Recently SimpleKids posted on something relevant to my life at this very moment. Who among us is not struggling with feeling that there should be just one more gift, that there is one more sweet decoration that, if bought, would bring the whole theme together. Honestly? I'm still stressing about a present for my husband - and yes, now you mention it it is getting a bit late in the day.

Anyway. Head on over and read their post on keeping your holiday simple, no matter how close to Christmas, no matter how (un)prepared things might be. There is also a great link in their post to Zen Habits, which I've linked to before. Another great site for keeping things focused on what's important.

Peace out

Alright people.  Let's talk peacemaking.

The world itself is loaded - fraught, you might even say - with meaning, and conflicted/conflicting rhetoric. In fact, my spirit is really d r a g g i n g it's feet about getting into discussing this, in a two-year-old-forced-into-snowpants sort of way.

Yikes, even the handing out of the Nobel Peace Prize is not without its controversy.

But yet - can consideration of peace ever be separate from this season?   Really, actually...no.


Has anyone else noticed in the shops that the 'on-trend' Christmas ornament this year is a peace sign?  The ones in Pottery Barn are glittery silver, but I've seen rustic ones, disco ones, and pink ones.  I guess the idea of co-opting the peace sign into commercial settings is nothing new, but somehow this season it's really rubbing me the wrong way.

But hey - let me not judge those GenXers plonking the peace sign on their tree for a nice touch of subtle glitter.

Tonight, as I reflect on peace (and the lack thereof) in the world, I am grateful for all the different versions of peacemakers. Certainly there are the servicemen far from their families, serving a vision of peace that must feel elusive as they go about their duties. Certainly there are the statesmen who must, at heart, still believe in some version of peace.  (I need to believe that some of them do, anyway.)   Certainly there are those working amongst the poor, amongst the broken-spirited, who strive to bring any measure of peace or comfort to people not given the luxury of symbolic glittery ornaments on their tree.

The question that's been niggling around in my head all day is this: what am I doing to bring peace in the world?  Yep, that's right.  What am I doing?  (I don't get any breaks around here.  The inner dialogue is very hard on Me.  Merely claiming "but I don't get enough sleep!" holds no truck with that inner voice.)

Here is what I am doing to bring peace to my little corner of the world.  I am taking my kids to the playground to "jump their jiggles out," so that tired bodies want nothing more than to rest quietly on the floor coloring until dinner time.  I am fixing simple, nutritious food so that the sugar and the stimulation of the season need not fight with the rest of their stomach contents.   I am watching Jul i Skomakergata every evening, that has a sweet story for each day of Advent, and taking the time to sit with my small people and translate for them.

Most importantly, I am making peace with myself.  I am allowing myself to forgive, I am disciplining myself to be gentle.  I pursue a path of kindness in a small small effort to bring peace to those around me, and then by extension, bring peace to those I connect with only momentarily.  If I can bring peace to our small home, then surely that is a start to bringing peace elsewhere. (And Yes, Torbjorn, that does mean I'm choosing not to pick a fight.

This season, the message that "He shall be the one of peace" is my inspiration, and my guide.  May all of us find that path of peace in these hectic days.

The gift of waiting

We agreed that a third kid would be good.  A third kid could work for us.  This was March, and I told the Nilsen Dad that I was absolutely cool with going for #3, I just didn't want a Christmas baby.

Neither of us are great scientists;  neither are we gifted at math.  Next thing I know, I'm in stirrups being told we're due December 31st.

I spent December 2007 very great with child.  Both of the older kids arrived early, and I fully expected that Nilsen #3 would do the same.  As such, this dyed-in-the-wool procrastinator got Christmas ready way ahead of time.  (And by way ahead of time, I mean in November; my standard 'way ahead of time' means the week before Christmas, instead of Christmas Eve.  God bless UPS Overnight Shipping.)

We spent that last month quietly doing crafts, making cookies, wrapping gifts, and counting down days with no less than five Advent calendars.   Every day, as my belly stretched bigger and wider, and my cheeks threatened to take over my face, I wondered if that day would be the day.

Even in my discomfort, I was grateful for the time and the mental space to reflect on Waiting.  One aspect of that reflection turned into a post which to this day is one of my favorites.  You can find it here.

Looking back though, at that last month of quiet (and yes, it was the last month: I'm told there might be another in 14 years or so), I am aware that it took me until then to fully grasp the meaning of Advent, and the Advent season.

It's a word that gets tossed around pretty frequently, at least for those of us who are semi-regular churchgoers.  Certainly even non-religious families do advent calendars to count down the days to Christmas. For most of my life, I didn't spend much time in thinking on how the advent experience could add to my Christmas season:  I just wanted Christmas Day to come faster!

Finally, as an extremely pregnant thirty-something, I became intensely aware that the expectation, hope, preparation and longing that are part and parcel of a Christmas baby are exactly what I need to focus on when remembering the birth of the Christmas Baby.   This realization has made all the difference in finding ways to make the season meaningful not only for me, but for my family.  We all can remember the time of anxious expectation, and therefore celebrate with heartfelt joy when celebrating the day of birth.

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Editor's Note:  I've been journaling - privately - about Advent this season.  There are a few ideas that I've reflected on that feel big enough, broad enough, to share with all of you.  The next few posts will - hopefully - bring a few thoughts on these things.  

Back to school

Pop Quiz:  who can read the syllabus listed below?  (Extra credit if you know what 'TWW' is code for) Answers below.

(oh, and you elementary ed folks can just keep quiet until everyone gets a chance to guess)

Interpreting first-grade phonetic spelling requires a massive leap in imagination, and is not for the faint of heart.  (She got Grandma to write the first lines, but 'metacognition' is straight from the first grade classroom.  These are NOT your mother's elementary years.)

We spent Thanksgiving weekend in my grandparents's one-room schoolhouse, renovated long ago to use for weekends in the country.

Needless to say, the original blackboard seriously captured the imagination of my little schoolgirl, and she happily spent hours and hours schooling her cousin and brother. This was the syllabus on the last day.

Oh, and here are the answers:

READING
1) Today We Will use metacognition to summarize our Weekly Readers [promise, she dictated this to Grandma]
2) MATH: TWW [use] easy ways to count on
3) SCIENCE:  TWW make our models
4) WRITING:  TWW use crayons or markers to underline the important words

The thing about this girls is, you are never. EVER. bored.  Driven to distraction, yes.  Bored, no.

Tree O' Thanks

What family doesn't wish their children were more grateful for all that they have, for all they've been given?  What adult doesn't spend at least part of Thanksgiving Day reflecting on their blessings, and resolving to be more thankful in the coming year?

We started a new tradition this year: a thankfulness tree.  I'd read about it last year - too late to do it - and resolved that, just as we spend a month preparing for Christmas, I wanted to spend a month preparing for the feast of Thanksgiving, and all the gratefulness that this holiday [ideally] entails.

The tree was cut freehand out of kraft paper, and slapped up on the wall of a Sunday afternoon.  I let the kids cut out the leaf shapes, and each night after dinner we've spent a minute or two trying to figure out what we're grateful for that day.

My favorites?

Annika: "Thankful for 'nack'!" (Snack)
Lars:  "Thankful for Daddy playing with me on the floor"
Cecilie:  "Thangful fr Granmo" [we've been letting her write her own]
Mommy:  "Thankful for red wine and faraway friends"
Daddy:  "Thankful for Friday"

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you. Most of all, this year, I am thankful for the wisdom to be thankful. That itself was the gift of 2009.

All Hallows Eve

Sir Larsalot, after having been recruited by evil pirates on the high seas

Pirate Larsalot, Coppelia, and Baby Ballerina (aka Miss I-Hate-Costumes)

Getting ready to hit the streets in search of treasure (in the form of high-fructose corn syrup) - pals Ellie the Cheerleader, Robot Jonah, and Snow PrincessEleanor join the search party.
Oh, and Sir Dave.

"Give us caaaaaaaaaaaandyyyyyyyyyy!"

We left friends on our porch to greet the neighbors whilst we hit the streets: Vampire, Grumpy Pumpkin, Princess Pumpkin, and Surprised Baby Ghost.

Christmas malarkey

Friendsisms

The day after Christmas, I had the privilege of taking Cecilie and BFF to Grandma's house where they would be whisked off to see the Nutcracker - they were both beaming with the magic of Christmas and brand new American Girl dolls.

Cecilie's new doll is "Felicity" and BFF noted that that was the one she wanted if she hadn't gotten the "Just Like You" doll'. BFF had seen the movie and proceeded to say that it was kind of sad as Felicity's grandpa got a cough and died. Cecilie was stunned as she asked to verify: "He just started coughing, and then he died...?"

I felt the need to step in, and informed the girls that in the olden days ("Felicity" is a Colonial doll), sometimes a cough might in fact lead to death as there weren't many doctors and hospitals. BFF was totally with me and added with wisdom beyond her years: "Yeah, the olden days, like 1993..."

At this point, they decided to play "through the dolls" and proceeded to talk about how exciting it was that their owners would take them to the Nutcracker. I focused on driving for a little while, but soon enough my ears perked up as I heard this exchange:

BFF: "...hey, we are dolls, how can we even talk?"
C: "I don't know, we better look it up in the Bible..."
B: "Yeah, that is a good idea, it has a lot of stuff about God and fairies..."
C: "...but not a word about dolls."

Christmas letter

Time flies, and around here it seems it flies on gilded wings of noise, chaos and general exuberance. Such is the existence we affectionately call Nilsen Life. We find ourselves at the end of 2008 wondering what happened to last year’s Christmas cards, and feeling that perhaps we owe a small update to those who wonder if we may indeed have chucked it all in and moved to a yurt in Outer Mongolia.

Last year’s quiet on the postal front was due to the imminent arrival of Nilsen Kid #3 during the Yuletide season. Positive that Baby would make an appearance any moment, Kirsten seized upon a golden opportunity for procrastination, and planned on a joint Christmas card/Birth Announcement (kind readers will refrain from noting that neither have yet appeared in their mailboxes.)

Annika Louise Nilsen finally turned up December 28 2007, at a whopping 9 lbs 8 oz., with cheeks to rival those of her mother. She has been a delight to all of us, and proved herself of hearty stock by surviving the constant and - ahem – ‘enthusiastic ‘adorations of older sister and brother. A few medical dramas in her first year proved challenging, but she has arrived at her first birthday healthy, happy and TALL.

Lars is beginning to realize the power of conversation – the longer you hold the floor, the longer your sister has to remain silent! - and has started to employ the multi-syllabic descriptors that have long been the domain of his older sister. “Mommy, that smells ‘uhs-gusting’!” Luckily, he has not realized the power of his good looks, and therefore remains quite charming (for a 3 year old…)

Cecilie, at 6, continues to delight us with her chatter. Recently while discussing the lack of forecasted snow, in an outraged tone she reflected that ‘weathermen are just MISCHEVIOUS, Mommy!” She has at long last started kindergarten. On the eve of her first day prayed “Dear God, THANK YOU THAT I AM FINALLY STARTING SCHOOL.” She will always be the sprite who surprises her parents daily.

The children firmly believes he plays noggin.com all day, but Torbjorn continues in his job as Professional Services Director at Databasics (a software firm), and loves it. What he does not love is his commute: a solid 3 hours there and back, even avoiding the worst of traffic. This means many hours away from home, but as a tradeoff he is fully up to date on all manner of public radio trivia.

Kirsten is in charge of supervising the chaos at the yellow house, and nominally in charge of steering the wreckage in the right direction. With Annika’s birthday pending, she feels that maybe, just possibly, regaining her sanity might be an achievable goal for 2009. Watch this space for updates on what she will be when she grows up.
Speaking of watching this space, if you find yourself riveted by this letter, you’ll be delighted to find out that Nilsen Life is a semi-weekly thing: you can keep up with the latest and greatest on http://nilsenlife.blogspot.com . We’d be delighted to have you along for the ride.

The Gospel according to Cecilie

After a full day of tryiong to upload directly to blogger I am giving up, this one is simply too big (I even had to cut her off at the end;), but click the link for an in-depth presentation of the christmas story

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LERsuQ4hM7A

My favorite is the lisp, caused by a missing front tooth...

Enjoy

Thanksgiving?

Yes we know, we're running behind, but this bird is here to serve as a segue to christmas, because as soon as the dishes are done it is time...

... to get the manger scene out as daintily as possibly...

...and find that perfect tree