20 DEC 25

While Patience is up saying goodbye to the studio for the next sixteen days of Christmas break...

...Oxbear has been busy chasing two squirrels out of the attic and sealing up the gaps... and probably their entire acorn pantry...

...and Yali is just as busy sharing with me in detail cycles of prehistoric dinosaur calls so we can decide which would be the “spookiest” to hear in the woods alone at night...

Puck returns from J's in the early afternoon after antiquing up another kaleidoscope to add to the one he found yesterday in South County...

...as Yali begins whacking a pile of scrap metal with a pickaxe and sledgehammer...

...while Oxbear conjures a bonfire in the pit...

The hours are already growing pale sloping into the longest nights of the year... but there's daylight yet for more adventures...

Yali is on about his 33rd dramatic death impersonation on the trampoline... the kitchen is still looking much like an illicit lab scene... fake blood being half-siphoned from a milk jug on the counter... he later runs past me wearing a bike helmet... couch cushion under one arm as he races for the kitchen door back into the cooling late afternoon... “Don't worry Mom! I won't be putting the cushion on the ground!”...