Not a good picture, but it represents a great day. It is such a joy to watch him doing something that he truly loves. I can tell he is in the flow when he plays and he plays so gracefully and with such heart. When I watch him play it is sometimes hard for me to believe that it's the same 8 year old child that I brought to the rink. He seems so much more mature on the ice. He moves around the ice with confidence and instinct that come right from his heart.
Tonight on Denison's campus was a free bluegrass concert put on by the students. It was held in a beautiful chapel on campus and the room was packed. Again I found myself thanking my lucky stars that we live here.
One of the things I love most about parenting is these
unexpected glimpses we get inside our kids heads and hearts. I was buzzing
around the house tidying up and was just about to shut this book when I noticed
the stuffed dog above it. I realized
that Ben had identified his stuffed animal in this dog book. I'm so glad I took
the time to notice and appreciate this.
From the time they get up until they go to bed (with only a break to go to school in between) they have been gathered under this tree playing with the train. They wait all year to get this train out and this year they can get it back on the track all by themselves.
I've joined The December Photo Projectagain this year and I'm really looking forward to the challenge of posting one photo a day for the first 25 days of December. I think the hardest part is choosing just one photo to represent the day. Today was unseasonably warm. We started the day at the beautiful tree farm down the street from our house where, after a lot of walking we found the perfect tree that was both beautiful and fit into our budget. We ended the day with our town's candlelight walking tour where we see Santa and Mrs. Claus ride in on a decorated fire engine, get hot chocolate, tour the town's shops and beautiful churches, see the amazing train display and go to our market where they hand out enough free samples to constitute dinner. It was a great start to December.
We saw this character in the street and before I realized there was a long line to get your picture taken with him I pointed him out to the boys and turned just in time to see Ben disrupting this little girl's photo with him by spanking the bunny on the butt. Oops!
In Animal Kingdom we were riding in the open air safari truck viewing animals from Africa. We stopped here to get a gliimpse of the zebras. Ben yelled to me, "Mom look at that! It's a John Deere!"
Ben was more excited about this birthday than any before. He had a countdown going about a month in advance. He was all smiles all day and even cooperated in front of the camera. He picked out the fabric for his birthday shirt, wore it all day and even wore his birthday crown on and off throughout the day. One of my favorite of our family traditions is getting the table and the birthday banners ready the night before. In the morning we light the candles of the birthday ring, sing to him and let him make a wish before he blows them out. In the morning before school we celebrated his birthday with his 4 best buddies at Pigeon Roost Farm. We were there as soon as they opened up and had the entire fun center to ourselves. No waiting in line made a good time even better.