This time of year, most of the country is constantly dreary and people are yearning for a sunny day. But it's always a nice change here in Arizona when we have a chilly, overcast, wet day. These kind of days so seldom happen around here. This time next year we'll be in the same boat as all those people longing for a ray of sun to peek through the clouds, but for now I can enjoy the grey and the drizzle.
There are 13 days until Christmas and Fiona is getting more and more excited. Instead of a traditional advent calendar this year, I made 24 little paper boxes with peppermint candies inside, and strung them all together with red embroidery floss. Each morning Fiona runs into the kitchen where the boxes are hanging and opens up the one at the bottom of the chain. She's thrilled about the peppermint of course, (what kid doesn't love candy?) but she's even more excited to see what number is written on the inside of the box, and tell me how many more days until Santa comes. Fiona will be 4 in January, so this is the first year that I feel like she's really been aware of what Christmas is, and is actually anticipating it. It's been so much fun this year.
On Saturday we got our Christmas tree. It's beautiful and my house smells like pine. I'll always have a soft place in my heart for the scraggly, sparse, Charlie-Brown-type Christmas trees that we had in my house growing up...but it makes me so happy to see our full, conical, 7 foot tall tree. One thing I did take from the trees we had as kids is that a hodge-podge assortment of ornaments makes a more beautiful tree than the trendy monochromatic or themed Christmas trees that you see in magazines and storefronts. My mom's Christmas tree is covered in antique glass ornaments, popsicle stick reindeer, little wooden toys and birds - all the decorations that we grew up using. There's no theme, no colour scheme...but there are lots of memories. So that's what I've tried to do with our tree. We've got an ornament from our first Christmas together, a set of nutcracker ornaments from the first year we went to go see The Nutcracker, an ornament we bought on our honeymoon...each year we get one or two new meaningful ornaments, and each year our tree is more beautiful and memorable than the last. This year I bought an ornament that is a pair of ballet slippers for Fiona, since this is the first year she's taken dance, and loves it. She was so excited to hang it on the tree.
More Christmas updates to come!
There are 13 days until Christmas and Fiona is getting more and more excited. Instead of a traditional advent calendar this year, I made 24 little paper boxes with peppermint candies inside, and strung them all together with red embroidery floss. Each morning Fiona runs into the kitchen where the boxes are hanging and opens up the one at the bottom of the chain. She's thrilled about the peppermint of course, (what kid doesn't love candy?) but she's even more excited to see what number is written on the inside of the box, and tell me how many more days until Santa comes. Fiona will be 4 in January, so this is the first year that I feel like she's really been aware of what Christmas is, and is actually anticipating it. It's been so much fun this year. 
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