Dec 13
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I really love the twisty and curly parts of grape vines. This is still more ice coatings on the best twisty one I could find.

In 9 years of school, I’ve never had the kids sent home early. They were sent home early today. At 11:30 the roads were clear and the snow just started. At 11:45 the snow was blowing so hard we couldn’t see across the field and cars were going less than 10 miles an hour. And skidding and slithering all over the road. It took Al an hour and a half to go 10 miles from work to home, it took poor Aerin an hour on the bus to get home from school 3 miles away. Pretty exciting. Once everyone was home, we turned up the heat and got quiet with books and projects.

Happy Snow.

Dec 12
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Experimenting with the settings on the camera, I realized I could adjust the color on the "Color Accent" choice. After a fair amount of thrashing about, plus freezing my fingers, I caught the red of the bittersweet berries, still coated with ice.

Aerin’s band concert was tonight, she was great. I was sitting way near the back, and almost didn’t recognize her until she stood up to bow after her piccolo solo. Stephanie Pearl McPhee  has a great post on the importance, and musicianship, of these grade school and middle school concerts. I think they might change up the program a little more at our school(s), but there is a relentlessness to it. But still, I sit in the middle of the cafetorium (vile word, vile space) thinking "these are all treasured children."

We are all so lucky.