7 days: let's try that again

Calvin enjoyed his first interview with Saint Nicholas so much that he's been asking for a repeat occurrence ever since.  That or maybe he thought better of asking for an African Wild Dog (his new favorite song, after all, is "I want a hippopotamus for Christmas) and wanted another chance.  Since we were going to be in the mall today for lunch with a friend, and since you know I never pass up a photo opportunity, he and I walked (or, rather, I walked and he ran) to the center of the building to meet with the man in red.  Again, no sign of uneasiness on Calvin's part, and, again, no hesitation in his answer either; this time, though, he asked for a train.  And not just any train, either, but a train with "an engine, and a sleeper car, and a box car, and a passenger car, and a flat car.  yeah.  Oh, and a sleeper car.  Yeah!"  in his most authoritative tone, complete with hand motions.  Forget the SLR camera, I should have taken the video recorder.

8 days: up to our you know whats

If we were aiming for a white Christmas our decoration arrived a week too early.  We watched the snow falling last night and woke up to a true winter wonderland this morning.  It's always more enjoyable when there's no place you have to go, and even more so for Calvin, who doesn't have to shovel it.  If we are lucky it will stick around long enough to brighten our Christmas day, but we won't hold our breath; we've celebrated Michigan Christmases long enough to know better.

9 days: all wrapped up

This has been a hard one for me in past years - I really love wrapping gifts, but it has always been an event of major procrastination.  This year I decided that Christmas Eve was not going to be spent scrambling around with scissors and tape.  What's the point of finishing the shopping before advent if we allow the wrapping to get in our way?  So Calvin and I have been wrapping a couple packages a day all month long and today we placed the last package on the pile, making us all wrapped up for Christmas.

10 days: and they're off.

Our Christmas cards, that is.  Never mind that I started working on them back in mid November, or that I had intended to send them off the first week of December, especially since we have a new address this year, today we mailed the huge pile and they should mostly make it in time.

11 days: past the half way point

We're down to 11 days now, and that means we are more than half way through our nativity calendar.  Our calendar is one of our very favorite seasonal items; it has 24 doors surrounding a stable painted on a metal backing and each door hides one part of what, by Christmas morning, becomes a very charming nativity scene.  It was a gift from my parents the year before Calvin was born and back then Jon and I would take turns opening the door of the day and adding a figure to the stable scene.  That first year we fought over who would be the odds and who the evens, and Jon places each of his characters defiantly on the roof of the stable.  Now, of course, it's all Calvin, but it brings us even more joy to watch him eagerly attend the task than to take part in it ourselves.