Christmas Season is on! The kids and I took cookies to a couple families. We wore our santa hats and sang a Christmas song. Sweden doesn't have the carroling tradition so it felt weird when those at the second house didn't know how to respond to it, but it was still fun. (I think it goes better when Daniel is with us. So we will really go carroling another time walking around to our near neighbors.)
Next year we are planning to be in Utah for the Christmas season. We have decided that now so that we can save up and plan for it. We will try to get all my family there. Robert will be home from his mission at the beginning of the month so it is an ideal time. It has been six years since I have been home for it and if we work it right I think we will get Thanksgiving there to boot! Knowing that makes it easier to not be there this year and I also can focus on my little family even more since It will be a bit different then. The plans feel good. And I am excited for it but also glad to have this Christmas and all the wonder of being here.
We also discovered that we now have 7 table santas! all second hand gifts. I caught Ella playing with them like dolls. I almost told her to stop and then realized that it is part of letting Christmas be special. and who cares if a few of them don't make it. Just wait till I get batteries in the three that can sing!
Ella asked if I have any ornaments to put up today. She has started making paper ornaments! The candy cane in the middle is hers. She drew on pink stripes but the flash maximized the whiteness of the paper. Below is her tree. It took her a long time. A lot of cutting and taping. I am going to have to buy more tape before birthdays and christmas gifts can all be wrapped. ;)
All the kids want us too find candy canes to hang on the tree. (so they are not as common here and it is only red and white ones that you find. none with the green and definately not the pelithera of flavors in the states. Which is probably just as well. I know all the christmas candy and goodies aren't good for you, but I love it. I love making fudge and trying different variations. But maybe this year I will do more Christmas crafts since Daniel is trying to get me cut back on the sweets. We are supposed to be on a no sugar cleansing diet but we kind of crashed it lately and since we ran out of the pills with it and it is Christmas season I don't have my heart in it. We did it three months, just didn't get to the homeopath to follow up and see if we were done. Then it was Thanksgiving and we ran out and well... I don't know exactly what I should think of it now. But that isn't what this is about.)
Every day, the kids get a little chocolate out of an advent calander that Daniel got from his family on his mission (or first year at BYU?). We saved the plastic molds from the box ones we got after Christmas last year and I melted chocolate and used those this year. Chocolate molds are not so common here either. It makes me wish I had kept mine from before (I loved making chocolates for my friends back in my school days) but then again you can't buy all the various chocolates for melting as easy either. I don't know where to look for it and even if I did it would probably be out of my budget. So it is just as well I don't have them.
Anyway, I am stopping writing so I can actually put some pictures with this entry. Then I will give in to Adam and go to bed. (He only wants to sleep if I am with him. Sometimes we can get him to sleep a little in the bouncer in the day, but not in the evening or at night.)
