10 days: Zingerman's for lunch

It's on everyone's Christmas to-do list, isn't it?

11 days: a bit of Christmas coloring

Calvin is actually coloring our Christmas cards this year (which is why the lot of them isn't yet done...), but coloring with Aunt Rachel and Uncle Steve in Christmas activity books found in the free bin at our library book sale is three times as much fun.

12 days: The family picture, and a little more

And the countdown begins. It's an important part of the holiday season—the obligatory family photo, the one that is included in the family album and often in the Christmas cards; the one that gets posted on the blog. We took ours today at Calvin's second piano recital, thanks to a tripod and the helpful fingers of family. We snapped a few extras, too.

Project 365, days 337-343

Decorating the tree, visiting with three Santas, Sinterklaasavond, a first Lego creation, icicles in the yard, making Christmas cards, and the sugarplums have visited early this year...

Sinterklaasavond, it's that time again.

I've written almost exactly this entry before, but isn't that kind of the point with traditions? In the Netherlands, the home of much of our heritage, they love Saint Nicholas the way we love Santa, possibly even more. And who wouldn't? Forget the crazy flying reindeer, this guy comes in on a logical steamboat and brings crazy Zwarte Pieten with him, plus candy and small presents. St. Nicholas arrives earlier than his Americanized counterpart, so we've added the habit of kicking off our holiday season with this Dutch tradition. The extra time shared with family is the best part,

and opening pakjes,

eating Dutch food,

and then we put our wooden shoes by the fireplace and go to sleep with visions of gouda dancing in our heads. My verve for picture taking took somewhat of a backseat to cleaning, wrapping, and cooking this time around and I'm lucky that Jon likes to play with the camera sometimes, too, or there would be none to share. There are none to share from St. Nicholas Day morning, though, when we were still in bed whiel Calvin disovered his shoes and the little goodies in them (an orange, some change, and a new book to read). We're going to have to be a bit more on top of these on Christmas morning...