We kicked it off with the Candle Tea in Old Salem on November 30th. Even Jay came along, who does not love the Christmas things, waiting, small spaces, etc. It was wonderful! Super duper long, but full of the sights and sounds and smells of Christmas! The hymns with the organ were lovely (albeit FAR too long) and stirred up my Christmas spirit. The beeswax candles gave me memories of all my Salem years, and the kids loved seeing how they are made. The sugar cake speaks for itself, as does Moravian coffee (we have two tiny coffee addicts as is, but Moravian coffee? Here for it.) The putz was beautiful and magical as was the simple nativity. We had a great start to the holiday season!
The next morning I woke up with a renewed excitement for this season of wonder, and started us off with Christmas music for the first day of December. Fitting, as we also picked up our tree Friday night! We knew we needed to get up and let the branches settle, so it was perfect. We also needed to supervise Joel Berry with this new adventure in our house. It didn't get decorated for two days, which was plenty of time to settle and such.
With the tree up and the season started, I set out to tackle Tanglewood & the Festival of Lights. We always pick a terrible time to go, and it ends up being sort of disastrous. I decided on Wednesday, December 6th...midweek, not so close to Christmas, hopefully good weather. And I had the day off for Hayden's check up, and to read to his class. The stars aligned, and I ended up reading to both kids' classes, eating lunch with them separately, and then taking Hayden to the doctor. We hung out and cleaned the house a bit before picking up Lila.
Changed into pajamas, we stopped at Starbucks for FoL treats, stopped at Dunkin for our munchkins, and even made bathroom and ATM pit stops before heading to Tanglewood. We arrived early, 5:30, for the 6:00 opening and to my surprise it was even better than I'd hoped! We were maybe 15th in line, fully into the park and waiting when they started letting us in at 5:45. What is this sorcery? We were well into the lights by 6 pm when they were supposed to open. We had Christmas carols playing and were enjoying all the hard work of the lights engineers, when the kids asked if we could stop and see Santa. The one thing that actually wasn't on my bucket list because it can be a challenge with schedules and these two wild ones with their opinions and individuality. But the line was SUPER short so we parked and headed in. The wait wasn't terrible, and I've certainly waited longer at the mall (every year) but it was in a tent and a little cramped but also chilly. The kids were in flip flops with their jammies, but didn't mind the cold if it meant seeing the man in red.
We took pictures and had a blast, got our lists in to Santa and finished up the lights before 7! Magical, indeed.
