I didn’t post anything at all in December, not a single entry to follow up a really good seven-post month of November. So here’s a short update as to what was going on in December.

Ania’s favorite season is indeed the Christmas season, and our home takes on a whole different decor during that time. It starts with a single box marked “Early December” at the beginning of the month, and caps off with me bringing down fifteen more boxes from the attic about a week ahead of Christmas Eve. I consider myself fortunate in at least a couple of ways here:
1) I have enough space in the attic for all them boxes and
2) Ania’s lovely/patient/strong enough to change our home into a Christmas time machine every year.

Sure I do my fair share of complaining when politely forced to thoroughly clean our apartment the entire week before Christmas while Ania bakes/cooks/remodels and gets ready for the holidays. But sitting down afterwards in what could easily pass as Santa’s workshop is pretty neat 🙂

We celebrated Christmas Eve at our place and invited Ania’s and my family for our traditional Polish “wigilia” (Christmas Eve Dinner). The two little ones seen on photos, Ania’s niece and nephew, did their best to wait as everyone finished before getting the OK to open presents. It was a very good family evening. Hope yours was, too!

Home
Without my station wagon we had to get creative with bringing our 6foot+ Christmas tree home. Ania also built her very first gingerbread house. A mere twelve hours later… this is what it looked like! Missing only central heating and air 🙂 I also performed my ‘man of the house’ duties by killing carp, Poland’s traditional Christmas Eve fish. I’m getting pretty good at it now.

Work
For the 13th year in a row I have assembled my little wooden Christmas tree at work. That tree has seen some pretty cool companies along the way. At work we also have who I strongly believe is Santa himself, but for now we just call him Robert. Ania made couple of gingerbread cakes for us…they didn’t last long.

Christmas Market
Last but not least, here are a few photos from our annual Wrocław Christmas market. We visited a few times with family, by ourselves, even did a quick ‘work’ mulled wine excursion. The market seems to get bigger with every year, slowly making its way to cover the entire city square area. Same stuff though. I managed to buy Ania an ornament at the exact same booth I bought one last year. Food’s getting better, and while there are plenty of mulled wine choices I always stick to the standard Christmas mulled wine option.