I wanted to post the pages I've yet to share, doing a little catch up for my December Daily.
Here are the days:
This next page is a scan of the top of a box of Shiny Brite vintage ornaments I bought at an antique store in Stillwater, MN, over the weekend. There is something so cool about 1950s graphic design.
Dan and I spent a weekend in Stillwater, MN, a little sleepy town on the border of Minnesota and Wisconsin, set on the St. Croix river. There was such a whirlwind of emotion for me this past weekend. In fact, when I look back to the December 13 page, my heart aches. How much we need days of normalcy in our lives. You know?
One of the things I decided to do was to get an Elf on the Shelf for our house. I'd asked the kids if they thought it would be fun when we were out last week at Barnes & Noble. They both echoed a resounding, "NO!"
But the next day I hatched a plan to go and get one, and leave them to find him when Dan and I were in Stillwater.
I left Aidan with a standard list of things to do: water the tree, bring in the paper, check the mail, etc. But I left the first note from Malachi (yes, that's his name) in our mailbox, to be found a few hours after we left town. The note was from an extremely bitter elf, who knew he wasn't wanted and just his luck, as he decided to come to our house anyway, found himself in an extremely sticky situation. (He was blindfolded and trapped in the dryer.)
Suffice to say, Malachi was a hit.
The kids were left with a challenge to one up the parents and create their own paper trail of elf-dom so we could come home and search him out as well.
Aidan took it to the next level.
She went online and got ideas for posing him. She created an Instax clue trail, complete with some serious riddles we had to figure out to unearth all of the clues. In short: it was totally awesome and she was giddy with excitement over the whole thing.
I put all of the notes and the photos into a little glassine pocket from Paper Coterie that was part of a Christmas card I received.
Each photo spelled out one letter of the key word that would help us find our poor elf.
We found him laying quietly on our basement wine rack.
My heart was about to burst, just at the fun and the joy created by my teen-aged girl.
So much to be thankful for right now. So very much.
I've thought about a song that I posted once before here on my blog, years ago, a song by Everything But the Girl, and while I know this will pull on your heart strings, I feel like in addition to sending love and hope and prayers to these families, we owe it them to try our best to stay with their pain and their sorrow.
So they can know in some tiny, infinitesimal way, that they are not alone.
I've thought of having children
But I've gone and changed my mind
It's hard enough to watch the news
Let alone explain it to a child
To cast your eye 'cross nature
Over fields of rape and corn
And tell him without flinching
Not to fear where he's been born
It's time to hold your loved ones while the chains are loosed, and the world runs wild.
