moons and celebrations

We are having a lovely, mellow spring break week, with Perry home and no plans to go anywhere. We celebrated Equinox and full moon and have been spending the last couple days puttering around on projects at home.

I have been giving a lot of thought to celebrations and festivals lately. I have been drawn to the feel of the Waldorf festivals, with plenty of beautiful colourful celebrations to mark the passing of the year. But because we are not a Christian family, the Christian focus of these festivals has made celebrating them feel a little uncomfortable to me. Enki doesn't celebrate these festivals either, as it is not a Christian- based philosophy, but leaves this more open to families to celebrate what is meaningful to them. And for our family, celebrating the seasons, the turning of this beautiful planet, the wonder of the natural world, that is what is meaningful to us, and inspires a sense of reverence and holiness and connection. I have known this for a long time, long before having children of my own, yet I feel like I am just starting to carve out what this will look like as a family.

So, starting small, we marked this Spring Equinox, or Ostara, together with a few simple rituals that will surely expand and grow and change as our family grows and changes. This was all a little last minute (it snuck up on me! Maybe as we get more into the rhythm of marking these festivals I will be more prepared? Here's hoping!) but I knew that a little spring cleaning was in order, as the house had gotten a little out of hand. So Perry gathered the boys up with snacks and a picnic blanket and headed to the big house where they played and had an indoor picnic while I did a whirlwind clean of our little house. When they returned we made egg shaped cookies together.

Dorian's cookies had a certain wabi-sabi charm.

We chatted a little about Equinox, and symbols of spring, like eggs and baby animals. But I kept it very light, they are still so young and I want these celebrations to be experienced in their little bodies and hearts, not analyzed in their heads. Besides, when I mentioned that we would be making cookies for Equinox, Dorian became concerned that the Equinox was going to eat all our cookies, and told the Equinox sternly (waving his chubby finger towards to window,) that he could only have one cookie. He decide he would also give one cookie to the moose he saw recently, but the rest would be for us. Clearly we will all be shaping our own ideas of what Equinox means to us!

We cleared the nature table of its winter collections and cleaned it up nicely and then added things that made us think of spring- feathers, handmade birds and nests, eggs, wooden sheep and goats, flowers. (and if you look in that top picture you can see two sweet little fabric birds in a crochet nest, which I don't think I ever showed here, but they were sent some time ago by sweet Kleas, thank you so much again Kleas, we love them!)

We made a simple supper based on our farm eggs -frittata and veggies- a favorite around here and lit and egg shaped candle I found in the candle basket.

I made the boys each a little wool felt bunny, though I didn't finish them in time, so they were waiting on the freshened up nature table the next day. I also dyed little mini playsilks (silk hankies,) to wrap them in, and they were pretty fun to play with too. The bunnies are already well loved and have been adopted into the bunny family. The bunnies they got in their stockings are the mama and papa and these are the babies.
Here is mama Nuttin' Nacarrot nursing baby Tramtrain Carrot. There is also a papa Coco and a baby Coco, but they are on bed duty in Dorian's bed. I love it when the things I make my children become so beloved.

We also pulled out the spring books (all three of them- got to work on that collection...) and read them several times. And that was it! Spring Equinox in the Small Wonders household. There was lots else I had thought to include, but this was just right- simple and meaningful. As it should be.

There was also our full moon walk. Although it was easy to mobilize for this moon (being super and all!) I love the tradition of a full moon walk. I think we will try to keep this one, though we wont always be able to see the moon on our walk. But getting out for a night walk once a month to celebrate the moon sounds good.
We didn't manage to stay out until it rose, the boys were tired and cold, but we did see it peeking out while drinking warm milk before bed.
Hello beautiful moon, and welcome spring. Now if some of that snow outside would start to melt...