View from the Prairie Box

I was dropping a friend off to pick up her car when… Wait a minute. That looks like Matt Damon! Yes, Matt Damon indeed. Well, kinda.

Some days you have to get pretty creative for the DPP. Other days, you let someone else get creative and simply capture it with your own camera.

Livia, chucking a snowball at her mother. See that white fuzz at the top? That’s the snowball. Did it hit me? No, the kid needs some work before becoming professional softball material.

This is my DPP alternate for the day. It was a hard choice, but the classic throwing-a-snowball pic won out.

Liv, checking out her new snow duds.

It’s ridiculously cold in Lincoln right now. I know my friends up in Minneapolis are laughing at me and shaking their heads, so yeah, it’s not as cold as it is up north. But still, it’s downright frigid. And there’s about an inch of snow on the ground. That’s one inch of snow that beckons and calls to my six-year-old, Play in me! Play in me!

And she does. Stomping in the snow, making snowballs, eating [dirty] snow off her pink fleece gloves, making snow angels until her nose and cheeks are frozen and red. Then she comes inside, stomping the powdery stuff off her shoes while sharing a crusty ball of snow with Shiloh. And, finally, it’s hot chocolate time.

Our glowing capitol building.

Batch number one of the best hot chocolate recipe ever? Done and done!

In the lobby at Berean Church, moments before the Before the Lamb concert started tonight.

Fabulous, fabulous show. Praise God for such talented musicians that bring light to this season of Christ’s birth.

I stood in the aisle at Target for goodness knows how long as I contemplated buying the plush white throw pillow. I had completed all important shopping and my brain wasn’t functioning very quickly anymore as I entered something of a Shopper’s Daze. The store lights, smells and dizzying colors had gotten to me and I debated and debated and debated the purchase of one throw pillow.

In the end, I bought it.

And I’ve found I have officially turned into my mother. “Don’t drool on this one!” I warned Livia right away. “Because I can just see you drinking something chocolate-y and then laying down on this pillow.” She cuddled into the fuzzy stripes and nuzzled her face in it. I took one look at her, and promptly gave her an old couch pillow. Just like my mom used to do. But somehow, despite my mom’s best efforts, I repeatedly napped—and drooled—on the good pillows.

Why we mamas purchase anything new is beyond me. And something white to boot? I’m blaming it on that shopping daze—and those alluring fuzzy white stripes.

We have a tradition of buying a Christmas book every year to read as a family. I write the year purchased in the front cover and add it to the pile of books from years before. Except, this year my bookshelf-and-armoire-organizing husband organized the heck out of our dining bookshelf and armoire and now I’m not so sure where the pile is. I’m pretty sure I’d find it, though, if I looked hard enough. (Have I mentioned how awesome it is to be married to a guy who vacuums, washes the floors and organizes my chaotic shelves?) Today, however, is not the day of searching for old books; it is the day of buying the new one. So now we have one fabulous Christmas book to enjoy, The Night Before Christmas, retold and illustrated by Rachel Isadora.

Livia learned that Santa wasn’t real last year, so I figured this book’s setting—in a village in Africa, complete with a black Santa—wouldn’t ruin anything for her. If anything, it solidifies the fun of Santa around the world, and how this mythical character is imagined and enjoyed in most every culture. The illustrations are wonderful and the poetry is as Clement C. Moore intended it.

I can’t wait for story time tonight.