Happy New Year!

We've had a lovely start to the 2015 so far, with a hike at the Andover Bald Hill Reservation, followed by a visit to the Andover Dog Park. A great time was had by all, especially Lucy, who found coins all over the trail!  So strange!  She racked up $1.05 in pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters.  A lucky start to the new year indeed.

Lucy and Ruth created their Fairy Gardens today.  Lucy received two fairy garden kits for Christmas (Thanks Ma&Pa and Jennifer&Brendan!) so we figured the best thing to do was to have BFF over so they could both do the project.  The gardens were a huge hit.  They spent a good part of the day yesterday painting them, and today was planting and decorating and pixie dusting!

Then, just because growing is fun (TM), we decided to start our own Giant Sequoia tree.  Jake brought the kid back from a recent trip, and we just got around to it today.  Good thing we got it started, because the first step is 20 days in the refrigerator!  So in maybe 300 or so years, we'll have a real nice tree.

As planned, last night we watched The Empire Strikes Back with Lucy.  It went over very well. She was glad that there was a lot more light saber fighting in this one.  (One chief complaint about A New Hope was that she had expected a lot more "lifesavers," which we soon figured out was what she thought those weapons were.  We cleared that right up.) The big Vader reveal was a total surprise, which is, of course, why we started with IV first and not I.  Which brings me back to yesterday's post and our mention of our major parenting decision.

As I wrote yesterday, we were planning to do IV, V, and then back to I, II, and III, and THEN to VI.  During a pre-Empire-watching discussion, Jake and I seriously considered cutting I entirely, and just going with "Machete order" (IV, V, II, III, VI).

But 30 minutes into Empire, my mind was made up: we are going to preserve "Release Order," perhaps in an extreme way: We are going to watch Return of the Jedi next (likely on Saturday), and then NOT WATCH THE REST UNTIL LUCY IS 25.  There's just no way it makes any sense to make the jump from the whole feeling and mood and look and story of Empire and then go to either Episode I or II.  No way.  We're gonna stick to the original trilogy, and continue to see the first set of prequels as, well, an entirely different set of movies that happen to have the same characters and bear a tangential relationship to Star Wars.

Oh, and as for midnight: as far as Lucy knows, she stayed up til midnight and rung in 2015.  In truth, we tricked her.  After Empire was over, we switched to Netflix, which had handily provided a New Year's countdown featuring King Julian.  It worked like a charm.  She was in bed by 9:45.  We followed not that long afterwards.

Happy New 2015, dear readers!