Paper Christmas

You never realize how much you enjoy seeing the sites of Christmas spring up around you until it's no where to be seen. Aside from a few local shops that have snowflakes and "Merry Christmas" in their window year round, and the hotel our church meets at that has decorations in their lobby, I haven't seen much.

When packing to come, I just brought a few small Christmas items, because I knew we were planning to go home to visit family for Christmas. Looking back, maybe I should have brought more. Because when what you put up is all you see, you really want it!

But... it's fun to see what you can do with paper. :)

 I did bring a few Christmas lights, and they definitely cheer up the room. And making paper chains, I learned, is a lot of fun. Hadassah "helped" me with some of it too. :)

 On a whim I tried making a tree out of paper, and it worked! The "ornaments" have numbers on it, counting down 'til we fly to America. Each day I take one off. We're at 14 today!!

 I had to put something else on the wall, and this is big and bright and reminds me to seek joy. Because we have SO many reasons to be joyful - the biggest one being our Lord is here with us!

 I brought our manger scene friends gave us for our wedding

And I always wanted to make sure I had mistletoe in the house when I was married, so the cheap one I picked up last Christmas got packed too. :) And the snowflakes may be the only ones we see over here this year, which is fine with me! I tried to show Hadassah how cool they were, but she was more interested in eating the bits of paper I cut out of them, so I had to distract her while I finished them. ;)

It doesn't feel like it's really in 20 days, but the decorations and Christmas music I play almost constantly when Hadassah is awake helps. It also fills me with memories, since many of the songs are ones I choreographed for my students. It may be 2 years since I last taught (already??) but I'll never forget "my" girls. 

Merry Christmas!