Holiday Season

Dear Friend,

We love nearly everything about the holiday season. We aren't huge fans of the gross American consumerism that comes out, or the long lines at our favorite stores, but the smells, the lights, the smiles...it's fascinating and beautiful. Below are some things that we especially love about the holidays.

Snowflake Lane just started up for the season. We love the fun costumes and fake snow that falls around 8:00 every night at Bell Square. It's like a smaller main street parade in Disney Land, with less small children. Whether you are on a date, with friends, or a toddler, Snowflake Lane is tons of fun.

The Botanical Gardens are a place we visit every year (except last year). The first year we went was quite eventful. The garden is lit up from head to toe in elaborate Christmas decorations. Year 1 we snagged a scavenger hunt meant for 5 year olds. It seemed easy enough, we just had to find 20 animals throughout the garden. We stole a pen from the hot chocolate lady with a false promise of "Oh of COURSE we'll bring this back!" and set off on our journey. The brightly colored peacock was easy to see, as were most of the other animals. The last on the list was the spider. After literally 30 minutes, we decided that this grey splotch HAD to be it, as it was no where to be found. Then we turned around and saw a massive web with a huge red spider on it...we're blind.

The Holiday is one of our all time favorite movies. There is not much more relaxing that watching having a holiday RomCom night, eating popcorn in front of the TV under fleece blankets, and watching Cameron Diaz fall in love with Jude Law. Hot chocolate is advised.

Decorating is so much fun. Tonight Kylie and her parents set up their annual snow village in the living room. Long gone are the days of elaborately planning out where each and every little figuring must go, and cutting out the fake snow so that the little train can make a full loop around the tiny houses. Now the Aberle's lay down sheets of fake snow, put the houses in their general location, nix the train, plug in the lights, and add a smattering of little trees and people and somehow, even without the obsessive touch that 6 year old K used to have, it still turns out pretty well. Catherine's house is always gorgeous as well. From the neatly placed lights to the santa's around the house and so much more, it's always a festive place to be.

As this is our last holiday season at home, it's a bit bittersweet. Colleges of course have Christmas break (unless, as Kylie's mom says, we end up at "some school that doesn't believe in celebration of anything"), and we will come home for the break, but that's not everything that the holidays at home means to us. The holidays are everything we listed above, as well as walking into any hardware store with the constant carols playing, and coming home to a warm house and a loving family, and seeing smiles around campus get brighter as the days get darker, and setting up for the season in our regular hang out, the campus minister's office. We're actually very excited because tomorrow we are decorating her office for Christmas, complete with personalized little stockings, Christmas lights, and the Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer soundtrack. Another reason why she's our favorite: who else would let us do this?

We hope that you enjoy this impending season as much as we do. We're sure we'll have more holiday related posts coming up in the future.

"Hug someone you love, drink hot chocolate, stay warm, and embrace the holiday season, for it is what you make of it, so make this one count."

Yours truly,
Kylie and Catherine