Saturday, December 1, 2012

brace yourself-- long christmasy post

what did we do today?  what did we not do?  at least it felt that way to me, after a month of missing out on saturday adventuring to write 1,667 words (per saturday), give or take.

so, first of all, did i tell you yesterday?  yes, i did... it snowed.  and the snow was still on the ground this morning...




william anxiously took one bite of his oats and then went and put on his boots and snowsuit.  can you blame him, really?  he was born in wisconsin after all...


henry was soon to follow...



the little guys... 

after playing in the snow in the backyard, we encouraged william with some pretzels, to hop in the burley (as opposed to ride his bike from one side of town to the next to the next) and went downtown to a christmas market.  it was put on by this sort of community center and the co-housing community we like so much.  it was held indoors for the most part and reminded me of the christmas 'fairs' (i think they would be called) in madison-- booths, vendors, wares.  we bought a really good lunch there, also a lollipop, two beeswax candles tied together with a red ribbon, and two jars of local honey for a mere 30 kroner (so maybe $5 or $6!)... because it was produced in 2011 and she (the beekeeper) is not allowed to sell it once it hits the one and a half year mark.  but really, it's honey.  those bees might as well have made it yesterday-- at least... that's the consensus in this household.  we considered purchasing a christmas tree there.  they were bigger and less expensive than those at the super best, but the prospect of carrying it such a long distance strapped to the burley dissuaded us, so we left and went to christmas market number two, on the south side of town, near my school.  it was both arts and crafts.

this is the crafts side...







we bought henry a stocking because he didn't have one.

god jul... merry christmas


we also secretly picked up a toy william was admiring, and then william picked out a christmas ornament.  we wanted to buy a 'danish' christmas ornament for our tree.  do you think 'pirate skeleton' counts?  (at least... that's what william calls it... but it's very día de los muertos really, right?)



next, over to the east side to go to roskilde's version of a home depot, for christmas lights and a tree stand.  the tree vendors at the super best were selling charlie brown christmas tree stands-- two crossed, wood slabs.  that would be fine, because ultimately, our tree ended up being a little charlie brownish, but there would be no way to water it then, so we went searching for a different kind instead.  and it was interesting, at the store, we asked three employees if they carried christmas tree stands.  the first, a cashier, said yes, but she did not know where they were and then suggested a spot in the store for us to look.  the second guy didn't know if they sold them, but was kind enough to look it up for me on their computer system, where he found they existed and were supposedly in the 'christmas' section, but i told him we'd already been to that section.  he then spent a minute or so asking me if the size of the stand mattered and told me what color they sold them in.  finally he said he would go with me to look for them... but then we ran into greg who had asked a third person with success, and was now carrying one in his hands.  turns out, they were at the front of the store, directly behind the first cashier we'd asked. i tell you this story only to provide some lighthearted contrast.  here we are, in a big box store, presumably modeled after those in the united states, but two out of three employees could not tell us where a common, seasonal item was located... and it just struck us as different, that's all.

so, armed with lights and a stand, we rode back home (north side... just like madison... all the way down to the fact of a nearby body of water to the west of us), stopping at the super best for our tree.  we picked it out all wrapped up... its height and location the only determining characteristics.



we got it home, got out our box of ornaments... the last of our shipped boxes to be opened... and decorated.  william loved putting ornaments on the tree and kept saying, "now this is what christmas is supposed to be like!"



henry had a bit of difficulty grasping part two of the concept of putting the ornaments on and leaving them on.  mostly he fell in love with an egg-shaped ornament decorated with three christmas cats and worked to put that one on and take it off, and sometimes blow on it (not sure why).  anyway, we've had real cats and even a twenty month old around christmas trees and ornaments in the past, but for some reason, i think this twenty-one month old little boy is going to be trickier than all of them when it comes to frustrating our goal of keeping a semblance of order.  sigh.







lastly we did some advent calendaring and candeling...







(and chili eating)



december first, and the christmas season is officially upon us.


and yes, it's not an illusion.  the top of the christmas tree really is crooked.  

3 comments:

Kit Nat said...

i love that you shipped all of your christmas ornaments over! Every year I miss our Christmas ornaments. Looks like a great day!

nina said...

Three times. I liked this post so much that I read it three times. Which made me think the following: this post alone, this one day, described, illustrated -- would make a wonderful children's book. The holiday books that described a child's Christmas (or Christmas season) in slightly different settings were my favorite when the girls were little. There was one in particular -- Lucy and Tom's Christmas (Lucy and Tom lived in some city in England) that was so evocative that it became an absolute family favorite. And it did just what you did -- walked us through a day in the season before Christmas (and then culminated in a very simple rendition of Christmas itself).

BTW, the ornament on my pretend Christmas tree that caught your attention is probably Danish. I bought it when our home had two daughters (meaning after the birth of the second) and I bought it at Century House which, you know, sells lots of Danish stuff. I'm not crafty, but I always thought I'd like to myself make a bunch of such simple windows with all sorts of things peeking through!

greg|regan said...

Oh, thank you Nina! I always look forward to your uplifting comments! The Century House has items from other Scandinavian countries too, right? Because the Danish elves are also very similar to the Norwegian and Swedish elves, I think, so it's possible you have yourself some Swedish or Norwegian elves. Maybe your nephew would know better than me.

Natalie-- could you ship your ornaments over sometime? Maybe at this point you don't have too many more Christmases abroad though.