Catching Up: November

After much begging from my littles, we finally carved our annual pumpkin -- but this year I departed from our usual style and suggested a fairy house. I think fairy houses might be our new favorite design! Some sticks, beans, and clay mushrooms (from Rosa's birthday cake last year) served as decoration. I've never used a hot glue gun while carving a pumpkin before...

But soon we had an early taste of winter -- last year we had snow on Thanksgiving Day, but this was a few weeks earlier still. I love the way the snow transforms a landscape.

Emma approves, too!

November was "puzzle month" for Rosa and me -- we do love a good puzzle, but rather outdid ourselves. Six puzzles, two of them 1,000 piece and the others unique in some way (mosaic puzzle, puzzle "sticks," and a winter scene puzzle back with cork that featured shapes such as dolphins, umbrellas, and candy canes!). I didn't get a picture of the sixth one! We'd had a bit of a spree at the local thrift shop, you see...

My favorite was this miniature 1,000 piece puzzle -- not only were the pieces adorably tiny, but the bookshelf theme was quite appealing. Many of the books had humorous titles, and the shelves are inhabited by all manner of fairies and creatures:

I appreciated that the pieces were labeled A-F on the back -- it made
it much easier to sort the pieces into sections before assembly!

Puzzles have always been therapeutic to me after a miscarriage -- something to occupy my mind, something I can "fix" when so much seems broken and out of my control. We lost Baby A just before Thanksgiving, so a plethora of puzzles to work on was so helpful.

Scout, apparently, found November quite exhausting, but couldn't put down a good story:

We had a quiet family Thanksgiving, and Scout asked me to read "Sharing the Bread" over and over -- the littles each identified with a child from the story (I'm surprised Scout was so delighted to be the baby!), and we all enjoyed the lovely words.

We put up our tree after Thanksgiving, the largest and loveliest we've ever had (also probably the most expensive, come to think of it -- but options are limited in our small town, and it was well worth it).

Grief and joy, pain and beauty -- ever juxtaposed, yet melding in a way that never fails to surprise me. And perhaps that wasn't a bad thing to be mulling over as we moved into the Advent season.