The Durneys Go Dutch: It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas 2016 Edition

I am so excited for Christmas this year! Excited to experience Jude's joy in the season. Excited to be hosting our parents. Excited to have a first Christmas in our new house. Excited to share baby's first Christmas with our sweet Maeve. Excited to travel to Innsbruck for some fun in the snow and the Christmas Markets.

The Classic Christmas Sonos station has been humming, packages are arriving daily and we are getting festive over here!

First up, getting the tree. We went to a massive garden center that Pete equated to the Ikea of Christmas tree stores. You had to weave through nearly 1/2 mile of Christmas decorations before getting to the tree section. As we noted in year's past, Nordmann trees are king here. Still getting used to their Charlie Brown-esque shape. The trees were separated by height, but otherwise just laid one on top of the other in huge rows. This made it really hard to examine and pick "the perfect tree." So we settled on the best we could find in the pile. Back at home, we realized it was far to big for the space and took our garden cutters to it. We had some issues getting the tree to stand up straight (and stand up at all) that harkened back to my childhood with Pops losing his cool while we whined to decorate the thing already. Boy does history repeat. We were going to erect the tree and string the lights while Jude napped so that it would be ready to decorate when he was up. Except he choose not to nap and instead just whined about wanting to decorate the tree while we struggled to get the tree to stand and to keep our cool! So familiar! We have the big guy tied to an anchor in our wall and also discreetly supported by a 2x4. Fingers crossed!

Which way to the trees?

An attempt to get a cute pic of Jude, Annabel and Charlotte by the tree, them in their festive "jumpers" and all. An attempt.

We rediscovered Elf Yourself and had loads of fun. Maeve's face is the best. My aunt Margaret also sent us a Jacqui Lawson interactive online advent calendar that Jude is so into. He also loves playing the "snap game" every morning where he tears a ring off the advent chain.

I found these Gingerbread kits at Ikea. No icing included, but otherwise a relatively painless process to make a cute house. This one is 90% me, 10% Jude. He got really good at using the icing tube! He asks every day if he can eat it, but we've told him he has to wait for Nana and Pops to see it.

"You want to try a bit, mom." Yes, I do!

Last Friday night after a long week at school, we searched Netflix for a toddler friendly Christmas movie. Rudolph and Frosty weren't available to watch, but The Santa Clause was. I fast forwarded through the part where Santa falls off the roof to spare Jude any trauma and he was otherwise captivated! Such fun to start sharing these traditions with him. We were so good with limiting Jude's screen time when he was a baby. I have no idea how we'll do it with Maeve. Shown below was this Friday's post-school movie pick- Mickey's Christmas.

This year's Christmas baby.

And the most festive of all: We drove 25 minutes to Haarlem today to experience their Christmas market. It coincided with the Jopen beer brewery's winter fest so it was a no brainer. Lots of Christmas cheer and lots of people! Not fun to navigate the stroller through the crowds. We loved the live music though and of course the gluhwein and oliebollen.

Outside Jopen was a Christmas bouncy castle where Jude jumped for joy until we heard Santa's bell. We ran to meet him. Our first encounter with a dutch Santa. He was fist bumping the children and then took to the mic to sing strange Christmas songs. He did speak to Jude in English though and took pictures with us. Jude was so happy to see him and didn't want to leave his sight. We found him a second time so Jude could tell him what he wanted for Christmas. A trombone. Great.