Thanksgiving is gone, and it's all about Christmas. Like so many others we spent Friday finding that perfect tree, decking it out, and getting our home otherwise prepped for Christmas. Hattie seems to get the basics about Santa Claus this year, so she gets to share in Clara's over-the-top enthusiasm for the holiday. This gets the parents excited, too!
We started by digging the decoration boxes out of the attic. The noise-making, battery-operated, light-emitting gadgets captivated the girls' attention for a couple of hours. All the old toys were new again.
Then we went to the Christmas tree lot a few blocks down the road.
We found our tree, and hauled it home...
It took a few trips to Target to get the tree-trimming elements, and Paul may have gone overboard with the 600 lights he brought home...but the girls get excited and the dad gets excited.
We set up the Santa landing zone...
And Clara did the honors of putting the angel on top...
So much for the 12 days of Christmas. This season gives us a full 33 days to ramp up, all starting with Santa Claus' first visit to Cameron Village. And the Drydens were there. Oh yes we were! We nearly had our own A Christmas Story moment when sitting on Santa's lap. The old man forgot to ask Clara what she wanted for Christmas, and in the rush of lots of eager kids working through a long queue, Clara nearly forgot to tell him. But much like Ralphie jamming his boots down hard and then climbing back up the slide to announce his desire for the famous Red Rider bb gun, Clara refused to be denied. As Santa was shooing us away, she turned around and made clear her desires (a big doll house and a ladder for her fairy tree).
Well done daughter. Well done!
For her part, Hattie took the Santa visit in stride this year. Helped, no doubt, by the luxury of sitting on Kate's lap instead of the bearded one. Either way, we were all glad to avoid a replay of this scene from last Christmas:
Clara also got her first sled trip down the artificial snow hill (insisting, of course, of going down the tall ramp):
Then on Saturday we had the Raleigh Christmas Parade, which we attended with the Kuss Family.
And finally we had the North Hills tree lighting ceremony where we rode around on the trolley, danced with Rudolph, hugged Frosty, took yet another sled right down the fake snow ramp, and partook of many sugar treats.
But even before the commercial celebrations began, Kate has been preparing our girls with Christmas spirit by practicing carols on the piano.
A full year ago, one of Clara's pre-school classmates told her that girls don't wear pants. And despite on the intervening evidence to the contrary (including that very girl wearing pants on many occasions), Clara abided to this false doctrine for a full year.
Kate shed a small tear each time she opened up the drawer in Clara's chest that housed stack after stack of neatly folded, unworn pants that our daughter refused to wear...opting for dresses and skirts instead.
The spell broke last week for reasons we don't quite understand. Clara is wearing pants and has even declared that they are superior to skirts for climbing trees and cavorting around the playground. Finally, we can use all these pants before she outgrows them!
Clara enjoys climbing her trees. The magnolia in a front yard has become a de facto tree house (though she calls it the fairy tree) in which she and a neighbor wile away many an afternoon, climbing to its tippy-tippy-top.
Tree exercises got ratcheted up a bit when visiting the Kuss' house over the weekend. Alex recently installed a Peter Pan rope swing, and here Clara tries her hand...
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