The tradition continues...

Yep, still here! Really! Frantically trying to get ready for the holidays and impending full house for the same. We will have furniture in the lounges in time...I hope. 2 weeks and counting and right now we have a rocking chair and a computer chair to sit on. Eeep! Dedicated furniture shopping day tomorrow, so hopefully this will be fixed within the week. Fingers crossed for us! (Apologies to Mom, Dad, and Peter if you're sitting on the dining room chairs or the floor...please know that we will have tried to avoid that scenario.)

Anyway, crazy and unprepared though I may be for the holidays (shopping? For gifts? What's that?! Again, eep!), I have managed to get at least one thing done, even if not to the extent I would have liked. I present to you Maggie's advent calendar:

Yes, I know it's a terrible picture, but it's the best I can do tonight. And yes I know I'm a horrible mother because a) it's all chocolate and b) none of them are wrapped. I almost forgot about the advent calendar, and I haven't managed to unpack the wrapping paper yet. I'd like to think I still get a mom point for getting it done on time (just). I absolutely adore this calendar. My mother made it for me as a kid and I think this is my single favourite Christmas tradition, bar none. Not only is my own mother awesome and always (at least as far as I can remember) made sure that she wrapped each of the gifts, but she also managed to usually have actual gifts rather than copping out and doing chocolate all the way down. I still have a couple of them kicking about. Most of them were small and inexpensive, but still, it was special. So much better than those cardboard calendars with the little pop out windows. Thanks to the world's best Mom for making this and starting the tradition! I'm hoping that Maggie has such fond memories of this calendar. Next year there will be proper gifts on it. There were last year. December just kinda snuck up on me this year. Did you know it comes after November?!

So that's the start of the Christmas season in our house. This is the first year I'm actually hosting my parents. Fingers crossed that I can live up to it!