SweetPotatoClaire: this weekend

We spent the day after Thanksgiving lazily reading, napping, and eating...... french toast for breakfast, leftovers for dinner.

It was unseasonably warm. So much so that I even got to hang laundry on the line. A bit odd for late November I suppose, but I enjoyed it even more because I know such days will be few and far between for the next several months.

Anyway, I was nowhere near any large retail establishments. Definitely the way I prefer to spend my "Black Friday". In fact, the farthest I got from our house was the sandbox in the yard.

On Saturday Claire and I went to a couple late season yard sales and found some cool stuff~ books and a few odds and ends for her, a large storage basket/trunk, some crafty things and a cool wooden box for me. Here are a few of my favorite finds from our little outing:

Afterwards it was home for a big (and late) breakfast. I discovered that she does not care for grits. Not even with a fair amount of butter and cheese. How can that be? Hmm. That's alright- I happily ate hers.

With papa at work, we girls hung around for the rest of the day reading, snacking and playing. A short walk around the neighborhood left us with a dozen fresh eggs from our neighbors. Our neighbors with 3 hens. They get 3 eggs a day. Good hens! We, on the other hand, have 5 hens and have been getting a whopping 1 egg a day for a while now. Yep. One. We have one hen who lays regularly, one who lays regularly but often eats! her! egg! (the nerve) before we can get it, one who is molting and therefore is on a laying hiatus, Pearl, who has never laid for us, and another Buff Orpington who we have been waiting (and waiting) to start laying. Yesterday Mike suggested maybe we needed to get some different hens. You know, ones that lay eggs.

Not a terrible idea. But what to do with these girls? Keep them around and feed them like they are (rather unaffectionate and surly) pets? Or eat them? Or give them away? Only time will tell.

Time and whatever mood we are in on the day we start making decisions about their fate, I suppose.

But anyway, back to the weekend. On Saturday Claire helped me make pumpkin muffins, and all day long I was struck by how much I love this little girl of mine. It's not anything new, of course. But lately I am just so head over heels that I feel literally taken aback by it. Watching her in amazement, I am near tears of joy quite regularly. Listening to her talk, sing, and laugh, I can't believe how much is coming out of her mouth. Today she looked at the book I'm currently reading and asked of the photo on the cover (which is of a woman walking her dog, and they are both in the shadows) "what's that man doing, mama?" So I told her that the woman was walking her dog. She sees things she doesn't know or understand and she asks what they are. Simple, yes. But still, I am amazed. She is counting, singing, joking....... a personality exploding before my eyes.

I am thrilled to be along for this ride. And especially grateful to have one of the best seats in the house for the show.

I rode that wave of warm fuzzies right into Sunday (even though she was a bit of a grumpster on Sunday). Papa came home and we all had breakfast together. Lots of clementines, of course. Ever since I picked some up at the store and introduced her to them, there is no stopping her. She likes them morning, noon and night. She calls them "lemon-times".

I kind of hope she calls them that forever. I will admit that I'm now at the point where I ask her to repeat things just so I can hear them again because they're so darn cute. I do it often.

Like with refrigerator, "fridge-a-fater", and porcupine, "turkey-pine". And many, many more. And many more to come.

She played in her room as I began my attempt at organizing the closet in there that is now spilling over with my various art/craft supplies. She painted in the dining room as I cooked and cleaned in the kitchen. We listened to Christmas music (shhhhh! don't tell Mike) and snacked and for the most part happily did our own thing in each other's company. She took a nice long nap and I made turkey soup, froze some stock, and steamed and pureed the rest of the pumpkin that had already given us a pie, pancakes and muffins. We snacked on a few big chunks of it before pureeing the rest~ yum!