Christmas 2012

I know it seems ridiculous to talk about Christmas at this late date, but we have not left it entirely behind. We still have our evergreen Christmas wreath hanging on our front door, and it's as perky as it was the day Shaun brought it home. It's already got a red bow on it, so all I need to do is add some pink hearts to keep it seasonal.

We celebrated the holidays at Shaun's folks' house, along with his sister's family out from California. It was just the relaxing time we needed after a few weeks of worry over what was going on in my brain and hosting a party ourselves.

I had a few spectacularly successful days of thrift-store shopping with my friend Patty (my good-luck charm) right before Christmas. I found this print on board in really great condition and thought my in-laws might like it, as they have an entire wall of nice old boat prints. They did like it, as did my niece Heidi, who immediately proclaimed that it was a picture of her and her dad. Shaun's mom put the picture in a corner at the foot of the stairs to keep it out of the way.

After a bit we noticed we hadn't heard from Heidi in a while. She had dragged a bean bag over to the picture and settled herself in with a blanket and a pillow right in front of it. Possibly the cutest thing I've ever seen.

Following Swedish tradition, Shaun's family has always opened presents and had a special dinner on Christmas Eve. On Christmas Day they open stockings and have another good meal. I made this fyrstekake (cardamom-almond tart) for Christmas Eve dessert. It doesn't look too great in this picture, but it was beautiful and it was good.

Willem's Auntie Hillary bought him the boxing gloves he'd been pining for. He slept with them three nights in a row.

I had to post the whole series of these because their faces are so stinking over-the-top.

With rain predicted, we woke up to this on Christmas morning!

Christmas breakfast tableau.

Willem really wanted a unicorn kit (?) that he could assemble and paint himself, but the only things we saw were really girly. I found this heavy metal unicorn on my epic thrift store crawl. He loved it and kept asking, "Who got me the unicorn again?"

Heidi loved the boxing gloves too.

The day after Christmas, we went to Camp 18 for breakfast. Here are cousins Henry and Willem in their hickory shirts.

This cat at Camp 18 eschews humans for the most part, but it loves Willem. It climbs right up on his lap when he comes to visit.

Perhaps Willem has a future in zoology if  his dream of being a sculptor doesn't work out.