;)
Here is Royce, lying around listless, missing his buddy Kalib, who he has not seen for four days now. If you are a cat, four days is like two months or so.
;)
We have not gotten into the Christmas spirit here at all. We have yet to send out a Christmas card and we have done no shopping. When the kids were all at home and growing, every year, well before this time, I would pick up the saw, we would head out the back door, hike across the marsh and then keep going to this certain place where there were many trees of just the right size, but, being Alaska trees, most of them were kind of thin and sparse in the branches - but we always knew that if we looked hard enough, we would find the right one.
The kids would fan out and everybody would look for that special tree.
Once the candidates were chosen, we would gather around and compare and, amazingly enough, almost always everybody would agree on the same tree. Then we would cut it down and tromp back through the snow, everyone getting their turn at helping to carry the tree home.
One year, Royce followed us to and from. The snow was way too deep for him to wade through, but he would hop about in our footprints.
The experience seemed to please him greatly.
Then they made Serendipity and that ended that. In each year since, I have been amazed to find a suitable tree in our own backyard. Last year, I was certain there was not a single one left that would make a good Christmas tree, but Caleb found one right on the fringe, headed into the marsh.
It was the best Christmas tree that we had ever found, period.
Now, Margie is saying that this year she is just going to buy one.
I feel kind of bad about that, and I hate to see a Christmas tree go onto a credit card, but that's what happens in life, I guess.
;)
Margie does want to get the Christmas spirit going here, so she decided to bake some sugar cookies. And look - there, jammed into the cabinet door above her - baby Kalib, in a picture that I took while he was still brand new.
;)
And further over - a picture of Kalib on a book marker, courtesy of his day care center, and another of him and his buddy Lafe, when they were tiny (and yet, even when he was tiny, Lafe was large). You have not seen Lafe in this blog for awhile because he has moved out of state.
Margie with the first batch of cookies.
But there is no little boy here to eat them.
;)
So Margie eats a Christmas tree cookie by herself. Above her hangs one of Kalib's earliest pieces of art. Perhaps his first piece of art. I am not certain. Certainly, his first piece of art to be framed and hanged.
There is a chance that we might see Kalib today. Jacob is home now. I know he is exhausted from his two weeks training in Washington, DC, but he is going to get lonesome for Muzzy pretty soon. He will have to come and get him and Martigne, too.
Maybe that will happen today.