It’s nearly Christmas, and I wanted to share the photos from our wonderful winter solstice celebration day before I need to report on Christmas.
We work up earlier than usual, on Nora time, and came downstairs in our pajamas to discover our stockings and gifts. 
Yes, we were excited. 
We decided this year that we were not going to spend any money on gifts, so our stockings were largely filled with exotic fruit — something I could pay for out of the grocery bill and which really were a treat because we don’t buy them otherwise. We tried a few things that we’ve never had before, cactus fruit and a persimmon, and have a bunch of favorites waiting for us when we get home from visiting my mom. It was so much fun to watch Nora and Chris pull the fruit out and get excited about it.
Nora also had two clothespin dolls in her stocking and a pair of headphone we bought to use on our Texas trip. 
(The headphones were, we thought, a good use of money to keep her entertained on the 5 hour flight. I checked out a bunch of children’s CDs from the library and loaded them on our iPod so she would have something to listen to on the airplane. She was definitely amazed.)
We gave Nora Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls (which I had saved from a yard sale over the summer)
and she was pretty excited about them. It’s so funny how toddlers really are just happy with one gift. After opening those dolls, all she wanted to do was play with them!
She received several gifts from our generous family and friends and we took our time, letting her open things at her own pace and play with them for a bit instead of just making her move on to the next unwrapping.
Nora and I secretly painted a t-shirt for Chris as her gift to him
(I taped out the letters and she painted them). Chris and I were very clearly thinking the same when we planned our cost-free gifts for one another…this is what I gave him:
and this was his gift to me:
great minds think alike, right?
We ate a big breakfast, drank hot chocolate, and just lazed about the house until Chris had to go to work. Later in the day, we stopped by Nora’s friend Miss E’s house so she could give her a gift.
(More clothespin dolls, which Nora had help to make.)
That evening, Nora and I went to a solstice celebration put on by the Unitarian Church, which was a blast! There was singing and drumming and dancing, and Nora loved it.
She loved joining in making all the noise and had a lot of fun when it was over inspecting everything on the alter.
It was such a simple, lovely day; I’m so glad that we’ve decided to make this one of our family traditions.
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