Winter break

We have been having a truly lovely time with Sacha home on winter break.  It's so nice to have her home and to be able to just spend time as a family.  This weekend, we spent most of Saturday in north and northeast Portland, finishing Christmas shopping, having burgers, an even attending a Christmas party (at which someone complimented us on how well-behaved our kids were.  So nice!).  It was a beautiful sunny day and not even too cold outside. 

Sunday, we had a lazy but project-y day around the house.  We had been unhappy with a lot of the house's lighting ever since we moved in, and decided that yesterday was a good day to do something about it.  We got some new fixtures from Ikea and Apa wired them all in for us!  He is also working on all our windows, putting up curtains and generally making the place look beautiful, so he put in some more curtains while he was at it.  Thank you, Apa!!  We love how our kitchen and eating area look now.  I'll have to post some photos.

Today, we did some exploring and some organizing.  We all walked down to the rec center at the corner, which is about a five minute walk from our house.  We checked out the preschool there, which we are thinking about for Tali for next year, and we also saw some gymnastics classes going on.  Both kids are signed up for gymnastics there, starting in January, so it was nice for them to see a bit of what they'll be doing.  After lunch, Sacha cut me loose to go to a cafe and address holiday cards.  My hand got really tired, but I had a good time!  I finally found a good cafe that is both relatively close by, independent, and yummy!  The closest place to us is Starbucks, which I admit to having a weakness for, but I'd rather spend my money somewhere local. 

Also, I had to laugh because, as I was addressing cards, I realized that our holiday cards have two little birds on them that I hadn't noticed before.   That made me think of the Portlandia line about putting a bird on it, and I thought that was pretty funny, because we had put a bird on our cards without even realizing it. 

After I got home, we did some purging of the zillion toys we have around the house.  The kids were actually really great about it and Mateo picked out quite a few toys to give away.  Sacha explained to them that we were going to be getting a lot of new toys for Christmas and that we needed to give toys away, in return, to kids who might not be getting so many.  This is the first year that he has seemed to get the concept of that, which was nice to see.

Finally, Sacha took the kids to the store for provisions and came back to make a delicious, delicious salmon hash.  We had made teriyaki salmon last night and left it marinating just a little too long, so it was too intense to eat by itself.  We had the idea of making hash and it turned out perfectly.  Sacha even made poached eggs, for the first time, to go on top.  Even the kids gobbled up their portions, which is saying something, because they're normally suspicious of new foods.  Poor Mateo is working on another loose tooth and is mostly into soft foods, so this fit the bill.  And, poor Rosa has a nasty cold and has hardly nursed or drunk much of anything today.  Let's hope she sleeps tonight, although I'm not betting on it.  I guess we should go to bed early!