A Baby in Salem: Holiday fun

Princesses Merida and Snow White: these are dresses Avonlea Jane bought with her birthday money.

I woke up one morning to find Princess Will under a chair, eating stolen cookies.

Getting ready to meet Santa at the mall

Avonlea Jane has a new thing for these very drunken poses.

For the last week of November and the first of December, we read numerous books to get ready for St. Nicholas Day, one the kids' favorite days. On the eve of St. Nicholas Day, each kid made one of his hats to celebrate.

That night, the kids put out a carrot for his donkey, a letter for St. Nicholas to deliver to the Christ Child, their shoes, and sacks full of toys and books for St. Nicholas to take to other children who could use them. Here are their shoes set out before I put them outside our back door.

These are the pretty fabulous letters they wrote themselves.

The next morning, they were so excited to find their shoes outside of the door.

Holding up a St. Nicholas prayer card

A St. Nicholas chocolate pop

"I get to eat it right now?!"

A breakfast of St. Nicholas crosier

That night, we went down to the Common to welcome St. Nick as he arrived on the roof of the Hawthorne hotel. The kids toasted his arrival with hot chocolate before heading out to dinner with Megan, Geoff, Jack, and Amelia. That night was extra special, because when we got home, Daddy was home from a week away in Portland.

To celebrate Advent, each kid has a chocolate Advent calendar, and we have our family Advent calendar. Each day we pull an activity slip out of the day's pocket, and this day was extra special, as we were driving up to Concord, New Hampshire to see Dan Zanes, one of our favorite family musicians. We've seen him before locally, but this concert was a benefit for a soup kitchen in his home town. He lives in Brooklyn and does play in New England frequently. This opportunity was great, because not only did the money go to a good cause, but the ticket prices were a quarter of what they normally are.

The kids were really excited and made their lists of songs they hoped to hear.

Performing with his brother-in-law, Donald Saaf, who also does all the album and tour artwork.

Saaf did a live-time illustration of the song "The Rattlin' Bog," with whatever suggestions were yelled out. The last verse wound up being: "There was a Princess on a frog, a frog on an iceberg, an iceberg on an armadillo, an armadillo on a runaway drum kit, a runaway drum kit on a galaxy, a galaxy on a hamburger, a hamburger on a chocolate malted frappe, a chocolate malted frappe on two cows, two cows on a jabberwocky, a jabberwocky on a branch, a branch on a tree, a tree in the bog, a bog down in the valley-o."

The kids danced right in front of the stage the whole concert. You can just make out Will's arm in front of DZ in this picture. Other than his brother-in-law, he was joined on stage by musicians from Concord he's performed with in the past, but he also asked musicians he saw performing around town a couple days before the concert if they would join him as well. The most interesting was a group of five generations of violin teachers. The oldest was 95 with his long-ago 65-ish student, his previous student at around 45, her student who was celebrating her 18th birthday, and her first student at age 8.