Christmas 2013

Finally, a handful of photos from this past Christmas. My parents (Mom mainly to her credit) put up a beautiful tree as always. They collect glass ornaments, and over the years the tree has become a fantastic ornament cacophony of random glittering glass objects. There was even a fish parade played out in ornaments. Maddie also has a new kitten ("Topeka" or "Peka" for short) we finally got to meet. She is so bouncy and cuddly, way more mellow than Rowen. Meeting her was part of the reason we decided Rowen needed a friend to help dissipate some of her angst, as Peka showed us how chill a kitten could potentially be.

Another family tradition is diorama-making for various holidays, where we make tiny clay figures to populate a little cliche wooden box setting. So far we have Thanksgiving and Halloween. This year we attempted Christmas. A lot of the clay we used turned out to be modeling clay only, not the bake-able kind, and when we checked up on how our clay people were doing it was a total massacre. My brother's reaction captured for posterity.