It's beginning to look a lot like . . .

Christmas or New Year, depending on what you celebrate.

Our visits continue to go well. The kids decorated our tree with the mini ornaments I bought yesterday. They seemed to have a lot of fun. We also introduced Hope to the chocolate advent calender. We had forgotten all about it the day before.

It's different going to the baby house at night when we bring Hope back. It's so quiet. Also, they caretakers have put up some lights for New Year in the windows. Why New Year you ask? Because they don't celebrate Christmas here, they celebrate New Year when Grandfather Frost comes. Hope has already said that Grandfather Frost is going to bring her a doll so we've explained that Grandfather Frost is Santa Claus in English and maybe he will bring her a doll. Fortunately at 6, I don't think she'll be too aware that SC comes on Christmas and not New Year, afterall what's one celebration or another. We had thought about incorporating Grandfather Frost into our family tradition and Tim asked yesterday if he was going to come to our house now, too, but with Hope's birthday on December 30, that's a lot of gift-receiving occasions in one week.

When we returned home, we discovered that the Eve Tree in front of the President's Museum had been lit up finally, so we took a short walk to take a look at it and the other lights hanging across the street. It was pretty, but the 1/2 block walk back to the apartment was cold and windy. For anyone familiar with the Slurpee brain freeze, walking to our apartment now is like getting a Slurpee brain freeze from the outside.