Happy New Year (and Merry Christmas too)

Happy New Year!! Last night was very low key for us (and I loved every minute of it!). We again streamed LIVE from Edinburgh for the Scottish Hogmany party. Fireworks over the castle, bagpipes, Auld Lang Syne with a brogue, great music and accents in general. The best part? Their midnight is our 7pm ;)


Why yes, we ARE still celebrating Christmas here. Well, sort of. Normally we plan fun stuff all the way through Epiphany, but for the sake of sanity Jim has packed up the tree and most decorations as I type. We still have a few crafts and, ah, cards to finish-- plus we'll do something on Jan 6th, like dinner at the park and a small gift ;)

Our genius packing idea this year? We marked one box "early" to hold the DVDs, candles, music, advent books and nativity toys for kaden... so we can get that one after Turkey day but leave the full decorating for later. Which is what we'd like to do, but have never separated the stuff out before :)

At Kaden's preschool, the Christmas season is synonymous with "send home a craft every single day." Seriously. Some are keepers (like the photo and frame above) and others are very temporary (like the paper angel he insisted on playing with until it was shredded). I think his preK crafts are a lot like childhood in general- meant to be fully played with now, and maybe a few things will carry over as mementos. But the stuff is for the experience now, not a museum later.

Our Christmas celebrations were nice. Also low key. We've been more focused on house and immediate (local) family than journeying out to visit friends or parties. We also skipped the Visit with Santa and other holiday-ish events because Kaden's been battling a cold the last few weeks. Today was his first morning out- gorgeous day too- where we went to Mass and then the playground with some other families. He was totally tuckered out, poor guy. We did visit the doc and are currently in day 4 of the 10 day Medicine War. But that's a whole other post.

so Happy New Year, folks! We'll enjoy the weather, the football, the black bean and pork loin dinner, and our family :) Hope you will too... may your year be filled with many blessings !