February Highlights

January is the bleakest of months. This year it was particular gray and gloomy – I believe I only awoke to sunshine 2 days during the entire month. So we were not saddened to bid January farewell and greet February. Here are a few highlights of my past week in the Little House.

Betsy girl reached the 6 month mark this past week. She continues to be a sweet, sunshiny dumpling of a baby most of the time. She is starting to change her nap schedule, which creates a few challenges as I figure out what she needs, and hates the tummy time we make her do – she only wants to sit up now that she is able to. She is at the grabbing stage, and you hold her at the dinner table at your own risk.

I took a few sisters and made a trip to the local thrift store this week, finding these vintage treasures as well as a pile of children’s clothes. At 2 for 25 cents, it’s a blessing to be able to stock up for so little cost on their next sizes as they outgrow the old.

I finished another quilt top, adding it to my pile of unfinished quilts awaiting the return of my sewing machine. I took the machine to be fixed and serviced in late November and it’s still not done. So the to-do stack grows.

We were supposed to get another 6-8 inches of snow last weekend, but most of it came down as rain. Not only did we avoid more snow, most of what we already had melted off, even at night.

The next morning I went outside to fetch something and could smell it – that indefinable taste in the air that means spring. I heard a robin, too. It may have only been the 6th of February, but it is definitely early spring here. We’ve turned the corner.

We may get more snow occasionally yet, and have cold and windy days, but the worst of winter is already behind us. How wonderful it is to live in a place where February is often more spring than winter, so we only actually have about 2 months of real winter! And the sunshine coming back is one of the greatest blessings.

Next comes the most unlovely season…hills all brown and spotty with snow patches; rutted back roads and fields deep with mud, sometimes almost impassable. But already where the snow melted off there’s a tinge of green, so the mud can be all the more cheerfully dealt with when we can see the inexorable signs of spring approaching.

There is quite a lot more snow an hour north, however!

Lastly, Janna recently had a birthday up at the Big House. Instead of a birthday cake, she asked me to make Danishes for dessert. I mixed up the dough the day before, and made the braids in time to bake fresh for supper.

And few things are as tasty, served fresh out of the oven.

And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it. – Ps 90:17