do you believe in fairies?

Or are you a fairy killer?

This is the question I'm asking myself this Christmas. In Ally's Christmas card to Santa, painstakingly printed and illustrated, she asks for two specific gifts, in this order:

1. "To see a real fairy, please"
2. A trampoline (for the third year in a row)

I'm hoping there's another option for me: cool mom who tells the truth. Because no matter how many interesting ways I dream up to trick her, I just don't want to trick her.

Santa seems to be in good standing with her still, and for whatever reason, that one seems breezy. I've always imagined that when she comes to me, as I went to my mother, and asks me to give it to her straight, I will. She'll trade in a little of that delightful, childlike credulity for some bonafide grown-up knowledge.

But fairies, man. Innocent belief seems really, really precious right now. So hard to let it go.

POST-CHRISTMAS UPDATE: "Santa" left a book on building fairy houses. Questions asked, questions answered. As Ally says, "easy, peasy lemon-squeezy."

and then she was SIX

It's almost time for the Big Party!

Friends gotta snack.

Treasure Hunt

Decorating treasure boxes

Karaoke

Opening presents! Ally requested a Barbie birthday. 

At Home: The Before Party

At Home: The After Party. Squashed cake on the left is a sad, failed attempt at the classic Barbie cake. Liv threw it on the ground.

Reluctance

by Robert Frost

Out through the fields and the woods
   And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
   And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
   And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
   Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
   And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
   When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
   No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
   The flowers of the witch hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
   But the feet question 'Whither?'

Ah, when to the heart of man
   Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
   To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
   Of a love or a season?