Paper Flakes and Warm Wishes

 We spent today cutting out snowflakes, napping, watching The Princess Bride, and packing. Tomorrow we are traveling to Bulgaria to celebrate the New Year with some of our closest friends. There will be a little skiing, lots of laughing, and hopefully lots of real snowflakes! To all of our friends and family members spread across the globe who are celebrating Christmas today, we send you all warm wishes for a very Merry Christmas! Buon Natale! and Joyeaux Noel!

December List

Family Tree:  a festive, glowing, collaborative beauty of a tree.

Pandora Joys: right now I am loving the Diana Krall Holiday station and the Dolly Pardon station (seriously, if that station doesn't make you sing and dance while doing the dishes, then something is wrong with you or perhaps you should spend a summer working on a dude ranch). 

Food Court Magic: I am sure you have all seen this a million times already, but it really is moving and makes me wish I could have been there.

Weird and New: It's that time of year for top ten lists and this one is quite unique.

Historic: And it's about time. Makes me very glad we took the time to fill out those surveys we got earlier this year.

Awkward and Thought Provoking: the photos got me laughing and the related post had me nodding in agreement.

Thin Spaces: Eren's thoughtful post has been perched in my mind for the past few weeks.

Sentimental Souvenirs

 See that little tub of peach lip balm in the first photo? My dad gave that to me during our last Christmas together. He had a tradition of spending Christmas Eve afternoon sipping tea, eating Gateaux Nana, and shopping for all of us at one of our favorite little shops in the whole world: The Kitchen Shop in Grand Coteau, Louisiana. I always looked forward to the ecclectic little gifts that he would put under the tree for us. I keep trying to remember what else came with this tub of lip gloss that year, but I can't. And actually, I never really used the lip gloss until after he died. I loved the little Art Deco tin and kept saving it. I am like that. I save things. And somehow that little tub of balm re-emerged one day and I put it on my bedside table. It's been there for the past two years and I use it on a daily basis. It reminds me of my dad, it's pretty, it smells good, and guess what?...it really is good stuff. 

So when we started planning our trip to Spain, I wondered if I might be able to find the lip gloss in Madrid. That's where the tin says they are made. I am not a big souvenir person, but as soon as we landed in Madrid I began the search to find these little colorful treasures. It became an obsessive hunt of stopping in every pharmacy, every perfumeria that we passed. I found a few in one shop and bought those to send my sisters and my mom. And then on our last day in Madrid, we hit the jackpot in a small pharmacy near the train station. I didn't realize there were so many scents and designs. I bought one of each. Feelings of success and bittersweet joy flooded over me as the hunt came to an end and the connections between Spain, Louisiana, my dad, and one last Christmas suddenly merged into a small plastic bag full of sweet glosses...strawberry, violet, orange, currant, vanilla, and peach. Sometimes souvenirs can be very good things.