Happy Holidays 2023!

Hi Friends!  

It's been two years since our last Christmas letter - life is so full right now, I'm sure you understand!  We continue to work on renovating our 1850's cape, although renovating may be the wrong word.  Gutting, overhauling - those might be more appropriate.  Our favorite days are when we are outside working together on our land - tapping our maple trees in the late winter, planting the garden in the spring, picking berries in the summer, and putting up the harvest in the autumn.  

Our baby girl, Mabel Rose Howe, joined our crew in April 2022.  She is a delight - filled to the brim with spunk and joy and an eager desire to do everything her siblings are doing.  They (most of the time) take great delight in her comradeship.   She is 20 months old now and is loving the toddler life!  Her favorite thing is to "read" books.  She sits in her little rocking chair with a pile of books at her feet or she brings us books to read to her, making sure we know exactly what she wants!

Conall Elliott Howe is quickly approaching 4(!) years old!  He is a cheery fellow, eager to help Mom and Dad. He prefers to keep his favorite things with him at all times (currently these include his pocket knife from Papa, a little plastic glow-in-the-dark man, and a "sword" stick that his older brother whittled for him).  He is always happy to join in with his older siblings in whatever they have schemed up - often a courageous battle with Ansel and a "mommy and baby" type game with Amelia.

Amelia Rose Howe (age 6) is a busy girl!  She loves to create and make art of all types - watercolor, knitting, needle felting, drawing, etc.  She is often found practicing her writing, reading, or math, or asking to practice piano or violin.  She is a budding executive and motivates her siblings to clean up or join in her games. We are grateful for her natural organization skills - she often knows where her siblings' (or parents!) lost items are!  

Ansel Timothy Howe (age 8) is our philosopher.  He is constantly asking questions and wondering about how the world works.  He has a vivid imagination and loves history, engineering, whittling, and making armor out of anything he can get his hands on!  Ansel also really likes to improvise on the piano and is a huge help mowing and weed-whacking around the farm.

Christy (me!) is busy wearing the numerous hats of motherhood.  I love adventuring with the kids to new places along the Maine coast and learning along side them in homeschool.  In my free time (what's that?), I love to read, research, and I started taking piano lessons this fall.  I'm living my dream life with these precious people <3.  

Barry is one busy man.  He juggles being a dad, husband, farmer, orchardist, runner, general contractor, hospitalist director, and hospital medicine doctor.  Don't ask me how he does it, but I think he is amazing at all of them!  We are SO blessed to have him in our lives.

My Grammie, Barbara Alice Liston, passed away in September at the age of 94.  We feel so blessed to have had her in our lives.  She gave us a living example of kind wit, determined resilience, and sacrificing love.  You can learn more about her life here.  We miss her so much.

It's a sobering time in our world, where wrong seems to be prevailing more than good.  But in the midst of this grief and genuine terror, I am reminded of a book I read in college (and one that deserves a re-read), Man's Search for Meaning by Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl.

“The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance."  

Amidst this anguish around us, it is even more important that we seek out the joy in our lives.  While we are not immune to the suffering around us, we are choosing to celebrate the Joy that is a reality of our daily lives as a family.  Life with these small humans is an incredible gift.

Love,

Christy (and Barry, Ansel, Amelia, Conall, Mabel, Pepper (dog), Truffle (cat), Ginger (cat), Prufrock (rooster), Dotty-stripey, Silver survivor, and two other nameless black chickens)