December!

Our frosted Chinese lanterns on the back deck.

Thanksgiving dinner on the funny farm.

The younger farmers can't wait to dig in!

In other news, farmer Alex had a birthday. We went to the zoo. He really liked the bats. Anni's is coming up this week. I'll be living with three teenagers! Say a blessing and eat a vitamin or two for me!

We've been busy doing lots of holiday events. We went to the Pike Place Market the day after Thanksgiving for holiday favorites, pomegranates! yum. Yesterday, we did some holiday shopping and then the river lights walk in Redmond in the evening.

Our weather has turned for the cold, with a few places getting light snow last night. Today, I took the older farmers to see New Moon. Ari liked it, Alex did not. Then I went running. I can do a 10k now, yipee!

Nano, the national novel writing contest has ended. The Seattle area won again for most words and donations! I wrote almost 186,000 words on my story, and have added another 120, 000 since. So, a very productive November! I'm still working on the novel and having so much fun. I love the story!

And a project update to close with:
1) We are still eating seasonally and as locally as possible by continuing our CSA farm box with a local organic farms and trips to the Pike Place market.

2) We are still attempting to grow more of our own food. The chickens are producing eggs, and we still have some greens and herbs growing in the garden. Our attempt at winter garden was not sucessful. The heavy rains caused a huge influx of slugs! They ate most of the small plants.

3) This is a tough time of year to decrease consumerism, but we're trying. We've limited everyone to just a couple of gifts. We're not wrapping gifts within our family, instead placing them in large decorated bags - reusable. We've also asked the future farmers to chose an experience over a thing as part of their holidays, more fun for everyone.

4) We're spending lots of time doing holiday events in our area, winter hiking, and staying snuggly at home.