Can you believe it's that close already? The weather wasn't very wintery until yesterday, so it seemed a little further away until now! Good thing we've managed to start a few preparations...
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The girls wrote their wish lists a few days ago (Sophia was the scribe for all three). Here's a glimpse:
Sophia asked me to write my approval on the paper so Santa will know it's okay to give this to her, and I actually did. (Have I lost my mind!?) But I did not agree to "a pet that we can take care of are self" [sic]. (She learned from her cousin that Santa can't give some things without a parent's okay. Good idea, Laurel!)
Last evening, we emailed Santa a letter from each child. I did a bit of research and decided to use this site this year: http://www.emailsanta.com/ (We emailed through the Canada Post website last year.)
I must say, this website was pretty cool and entertaining! The letter form was fun to fill out. When asked how good she has been this year, Sophia selected "my halo has been to the repair shop only a few times", which I thought was admirably honest!
We received a reply to each letter immediately and it was very customized with mention of the items they asked for and any additional comments they included in their letter. For example, Georgia asked for Dora stuff and Santa wrote back, "Did you know that Dora and that silly monkey Boots visited me at the North Pole on one of their adventures?" (Well, of course Georgia knew that! She's Dora's #1 fan.) Santa wrote back to Madeline, "By the way, Rudolph came running when I told him that you mentioned him in your email!"
The girls all loved hearing Santa's reply when I read it to them. The website also makes it easy to print a nice copy of the letter we sent to Santa and his reply.
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Though I haven't acted on this yet, I have the unusual urge to do some Christmas baking (maybe it's because others keep mentioning it on their blogs!). I say unusual because I don't do Christmas baking and I've never felt like I needed to. It seems like an awful lot of work to me (I prefer to bake simple things like muffins, and I don't even do that very often!), and we always end up consuming plenty of Christmas treats without having a ready supply in our own house! But this year... I think I would like to make shortbread. Specifically, my Grandma's / Mom's recipe. It's my favourite cookie, bar none. I don't need anything else. Maybe someday I'll make some of the other Christmas favourites my Mom made when I was growing up, but I don't think I need to make more than one thing this year. That would be crazy -- for me!
Since I'm a little (or a lot) inexperienced, I should read these Better baking tips for shortbreads and butter cookies. I do have our family recipe, so I just need to find some time. (Alone time preferably... I'm sorry to say I'm not eager to do this with three little helpers. Gosh, I admire people who have the patience to bake with children helping!)
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I always enjoy putting up and decorating the tree -- and I even like having the girls help me with this activity! But I won't do it until December. I think the 6th looks like a good day for it. This year, I'm planning to purge the things we don't use anymore from our two big bins of Christmas decorations. Both are completely full and I hope to pare them down a bit.
I just remembered I have already purchased an ornament for each child (I do this every year; here are photos of all the girls' ornaments so far). This year, I bought handmade ornaments at the Rogers Pass Discovery Centre when we drove through the mountains in the summer. This is great because I often don't get that done until after Christmas.
Neil put up our new lights on the house last week (but we won't turn them on until Dec 1). We traded in our old incandescent lights at Home Depot a few weeks ago and got some great discounts on LED lights. I'm so glad they have "warm white" lights available now.
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Hmmm, what else? We only have a little bit of Christmas shopping done so far. I think I'm usually a bit more organized about gifts by this date. Time to get crackin'!
We don't have official plans for Christmas celebrations yet, but we will get together with my side of the family (most of Neil's side will be out of province/country at Christmas). Unfortunately, I don't have any vacation days left to use at Christmas this year, but I will have a five day stretch from the 24th to the 28th. Looking forward to that!
