Advent-ure

While the first week of December is a time of immense stress for Mummy, as we start receiving more orders in a day than we often do in a week – with all the attendant small crises that brings; it is a time of great excitement for the Minx.

She was really too young to understand much of what was going on for Christmas last year, but this time is really getting into the idea.

We managed to get ourselves organised enough to hang up and fill the family Advent calendar on December 1st (this doesn’t always happen) – a somewhat rustic affair made from linen and sackcloth that I acquired years ago at the Country Living Fair.

It combines little pockets stuffed with small embroidered dolls and little sacks ready to be stuffed with sweets and other goodies.

This year we also decided to incorporate some of the ideas for family activities I wrote about last year.

I thought a calendar full of activities would be a bit much for all concerned, but in amongst the pockets of this year’s calendar we’ve hidden notes with the following activities:

• Write a letter to Santa
• Paint the whole family’s toenails pink
• Make a gingerbread house with Mummy
• Buy and donate a gift to a child in need
• Meet Daddy downtown for an evening ride on the Christmas carousel
• Have hot chocolate with all the fixins’
• Make Christmas cookies for the tree

So far the little embroidered dollies have been given short shrift, the sweets have been much appreciated and we wrote our letter to Santa today.

I was pleased to find this post on Lifehacker giving info on how to write to Santa and receive a reply.  Canada Post’s service appears to be free and they have a lovely website with special Christmas stationery you can design and make yourself on the computer. I couldn’t work out whether USPS even ran a scheme from their website and you have to pay for the Finnish service.

We spent a lot of time this afternoon printing Christmas stationery, drawing pictures of Santa and preparing a package to send to the North Pole (postcode H0H 0H0).  I will let you know whether the Canadian Santa manages to respond.

I also decided to brave the line at Nordstrom’s downtown this morning so the Minx could meet Father Christmas.  I have no idea why, but we were able to breeze in without queueing at all – we were told that normally you’d have to wait nearly an hour.

The Minx was utterly thrilled.