It feels so weird today – to not have the day off school. I count on this four day weekend to get a lot done for Christmas – so I’m a bit off my mark. I need my routines and traditions more than I realized. I must have some kind of internal annual clock that keeps me moving along, but now, I feel like I’m floundering. It probably doesn’t help I was up til 1:15 this morning and then up again at six to go to school, so my brain is really slow. At school today I could barely understand anything being taught. I just wanted to sleep. But there was one woman in the class that just broke down in tears because the concept we were working on was just too hard. I think it was best I was a bit dull in the brain or I might have cried too – but I didn’t have the good sense to even understand I was overwhelmed with the concept. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.
Norwegians may not have Thanksgiving, but they are still proud of their Christian heritage so Christmas is really a big deal and they go all out for it (but we are lacking in the “after Thanksgiving day sales” here.) I love all the Christmas decorations in the stores – they are so elegant (as are most Norwegian home decorations). The reigning colors of Christmas here are red and white – and everything has hearts on it. It’s like we’re approaching Valentine’s day or something, but hearts represent the love of Christ so they do hearts like you can’t believe. There are no snowmen, and I’ve yet to see a manger. I’ve seen a few angels and the Norwegian version of Santa and his wife are everywhere (Jule Nisse is his name). Some of the stores also have decorations in Purple and silver or black and silver, but you won’t find a single red and green anything here, so that’s different. And linens (table cloths, doilies, towels, etc.) are huge here any time of year, but at Christmas they go all out with stuff like that and have lots of Christmas linens in the house. They even change their kitchen curtains to a Christmas fabric that usually matches their tablecloth or placemats. Some people even have bedspreads just for Christmas.
Tradition here in Norway is that the first Sunday of Advent (this one coming up), the lights go up – whether they are on the houses or electric candles in the windows. They also have these cool paper stars with holes in them and a tiny light bulb inside so the light shines through and they hang those in the windows as well, so this weekend houses will literally start to shine around here. No one puts their tree up before Christmas Eve however, but I’m just sure I can’t wait that long so we might look a little odd with the tree up half way through December. Normally we go up to Mt. Baker on the Saturday after Thanksgiving and cut it down and get it up soon after that, but with Kaleb’s birthday coming next week, and 16 boys in our little house, I’m sure a tree wouldn’t survive – nor would any decorations. So, I’m holding off decorating for Christmas until after the 7th this year. At least all my presents are bought and wrapped and I don’t have to do that (I bought everything in America and brought it with us.)
I helped Kaleb today to finish up his latest edition of The Weakly Puppy (his monthly dog newspaper). He has such little time now with all the homework he must do, so he dictated to me a funny story he made up about Santa letting his dog deliver the presents on Christmas Eve. He hasn’t even had much time to spend with dogs this month so he was in a panic about what to write about – until the possibility of fiction entered his mind. It soon will be two years ago that he started that paper. Every time he publishes one I wonder if it will be the last one, but he just keeps on going. That stubborn Norwegian blood can be a good thing.
We all pretty much had uneventful days today (it snowed a little though and Kory drew more pictures – see photo). The highlight of mine and Kory’s day was a long afternoon nap while Kaleb was over at Tobias’ house playing hide and seek with him and his 4 year old twin brothers. Somehow, the afternoon just whizzed by so we had a late dinner and then watched “A Christmas Story” with Tobias as he came over this evening. I was able to download that movie from a website a cousin told me about, so I hooked my laptop up to our TV via a cable I bought that streams video, and wa-la – we had a high tech movie night. The only problem was, it was in black and white and I’m not clever enough to figure out why that happened, I was just glad to get the movie to show up on the big screen. Simple pleasures are the best.
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