Ever Turned Nine, and So Did Leela

On December 17, 2020, our "firstborn in the wilderness," as Jim likes to call her, turned nine. It's been so long, I don't remember the day, but it was very mellow. We did gifts and cinnamon rolls in the morning. Jim got her some books, including one or two of the "Caroline years" series of the Little House books. (Caroline was Laura Ingalls Wilder's mom.) They're out of print and rare, so the price was astronomical. Ever was surprised and excited. 

That night we had chocolate peanut butter cake. I think just Cikaneks joined us. We only consumed about half the cake. Subsequently I purchased mini cake pans so that I could start halving recipes and make cute little layer cakes.

I took another sideways video because what is wrong with me?

We are so lucky to have Ever as our firstborn. She loves crafts and Legos and reading. She is inquisitive and fun and bright. She learns quickly. When it comes to school (not so much chores), she is super-focused and hardworking. She has perfectionist tendencies like her mother. I try to convince her not to waste time on things that don't matter because that is one of my huge personality flaws and I want her not to become me. She can be incredibly sweet and mothering (can that word be right?) to her sisters. Jim calls her "little Mama." She does not like playing piano but continues under duress. She wants to know everything that is ever talked about and is ALWAYS listening. If Jim and I try to say something to each other in low voices, she'll immediately start interrogating us about what we said, and she is relentless. We call her "The Detective," or "The Food Detective" in particular. She knows Jim and I eat treats after the girls go to bed, so she's always trying to figure out what we've done. Recently - so maybe this should go in the tenth-birthday post instead of the ninth-birthday post - she told me that every morning, she looks in the trash and in the fridge/freezer to see what we consumed the night before. Not infrequently, I get falsely accused. Like she found a fruit-snack package in the garbage one morning and confronted me about it. In reality, I had just found the garbage in Tiny's backpack and thrown it away. Oh, that my sweets obsession could not be passed down to my children! But alas.  

The next day was Leela's birthday, and the girls went up for a pancake breakfast. 

Tiny was so tired that night that she put her head down through dinner and wanted to sleep. (Notice how she saved the vegetables for last.)

She really perked up when we had leftover cake for dessert, though.

As part of the birthday weekend, Anna invited us to attend a drive-in production of The Nutcracker in Del Mar. All three girls wanted to go. Wren fell asleep in the four o'clock hour as we drove there.  

Tiny had an accident after we arrived. That had not happened in a really long time and was not ideal. 

It was really chilly. I wore socks with my slippers to try to stay warm. The dancers danced on the stage in the parking lot, and screens above the stage magnified the show so all could see. 

It was a late night. The Nutracker is long, even for kids with great attention spans. Overall I think it was a relatively enjoyable experience, but I don't think I'd spring for tickets in that setting again. COVID just made in-theater productions impossible. 

First Half of December 2020 - piano recital, Santa Margarita River Trail, Christmas stuff begins, etc.

Tiny, who wears dresses exclusively, did some letter-writing practice while the biggers did their school.

I found a note about a scavenger hunt in my room. Berry is the best. 

"There's a few papers in your room. Find them. There's 17 of them."  

She had a written words on little scraps of paper - "praying," "painting," "running," "skiing," "wishing," etc. I don't believe there was any significance to the words. 

We went out for a night walk once to enjoy the Christmas lights and ran into Cikaneks on our way out. I'm not sure why Nathan and Wrenzy held hands, but it was adorable. 

Our house and Cikaneks' house were two of the best lit. 

Ever and Wrenzy did a Zoom piano recital on a Saturday morning. I recorded Ever's sideways because I can never remember how my video function works. 

After the recital, we hiked the Santa Margarita River Trail. I always love the yellow trees. I took lots of pictures of people's backs. 

We fueled up with the traditional candy dispersal at a sign.

We lunched by the river.

We had never gone past the river but wanted to venture on. A lot of weird off-roading and scrambling occurred before we picked up the trail. 

Berrykins melted down and couldn't take anymore. I really wanted to get to the end of the trail, so Jim stayed on a bench with the littles while Ever ran/walked with me to the end. I took Jim's phone with the All Trails app so we could find our way. I'm so bad at map-reading that when there was a fork, we just picked a way and then watched the app to see if we were staying on the trail or not; if not, we'd go back and take the other way. Wouldn't have made it without the app. It was a fun time with Goose. I loved holding her hand and jogging the trail. 

The end of the trail was a little anticlimactic. It just sort of stopped, and there wasn't much to see. 

Ever and I were gone for a good chunk of time because it was a decent distance to the end (maybe a mile each way) and we did a little backtracking. Jim did not have a particularly good time with the disgruntled littles. He definitely got the short end of that stick. Anyway, we got back to them and started the return trip. We passed an old, wrecked car off the side of the trail and checked it out. 

Anna invited Ever and a bunch of other friends of Leela and Rafi to participate in a paddle-boarding thing. They had a lot of fun.

Lelei Thompson, Ever, Hollis Holder with Grace Spengler on her back (Grace and Hollis are Palmquist friends), Leela, Rafi, and Fox Bunnell

The Kindness Elves returned. Wrenzy wrote them the sweetest note.

Translation: "Elves, I am sorry if I am disturbing ['dusterving' = cutest spelling ever] you. But I wanted to say that for Christmas I want a bunny that has a necklace sewed onto it with a bed to go with it and a crown. Love, Wren."

Ever made cute Christmas cookies for a Primary activity conducted over Zoom.