Holiday season must-dos

.Smack dab in the holiday season and I have really gotten into the spirit this year(aka. adhered to societal norms and rules in order to avoid being the neighbourhood Grinch). As required, I've done and actually enjoyed the following pre-xmas activities:

• baked cookies with Kaya which mysteriously transformed themselves, in the oven, into hardened, tasteless flour with powdered sugar - will just save them for guests.
• partaken in Kaya's pre-school, xmas art and crafts afternoon. We managed to cut out an xmas tree and drown it in glue and red lentils - I seriously kept thinking what a waste of food, people could feed off this amount of legumes for months. We will have to mail Kaya's badly decorated cardboard cut out to a third world country once the holidays are over.
• purchased an xmas tree, not made of recycled steel (for those of you that have previously celebrate with out Russian tank). Although in order to do our part to help the planet, Stefan insisted that it be plantable. So it'll most likely be proper-sized for xmas 2024!
• had punch at the local Christmas market while the kids rolled around in the hay. Nothing like getting a little tipsy while your children built hay-gloos. Our entrance way has looked like a stable for the past month, nothing like a little hay to give a city-flat a little farm-flair.
• fed many a hungry guests with turkey and all the fixings since the beginning of the month. I think I could season, stuff and carve the wattled bird in my sleep.
• located a Santa in Vienna (needle in a hay stack) and have two kids sit on his lap without wailing. I believe that Kaya almost, even smiled at the bearded, red-clad, large-bellied man.

and the biggest one of all...

• lied to my daughter and fed her a myth about a flying fat man, 12 reindeer and a gift-manufacturing elf-village.