Christmas Dilemas

I remembered I had some pre-Christmas posts I wrote but forgot to post!

December 16th, 2012

I decided to make the most of Christmas here in Grenada. I am so freakin excited to have some time with Ross in between medical school terms. A whole month!
It will be nice to have a Christmas that isn't filled with packing up our life and moving a couple states away. Let me be brutally honest when I say that last holiday season was ... awful.
BUT, that is in the past and I am prepared for the BEST CHRISTMAS on anyone's record. Lots of people feel sorry for me and Ross, that we aren't going back to the States for Christmas, to play in snow and wrap up in blankets. And at one point I think I did feel sorry for myself, but I'm over it. Now I think more people feel sorry for me than I feel sorry for myself.

Think about it, how many people pay thousands of dollars to come to the Caribbean for a warm, sunny, sandy Christmas? How many people joke about Santa in a Hawaiian shirt sipping a smoothie? What I have is a rare opportunity! And years down the road when our family is swamped in bills and crazy kids I might be wishing I would have lived up those holidays in Grenada.
I decided to come up with little ways to get in the holiday spirit because we all know that it far from feels like winter here. This involves tackling what I will call:

Christmas Dilemas!

Dilema #1
Ross and I both LOVE lighted Christmas trees. Not having money, I thought of creative ideas for trees, felt tree? butcher paper tree? Ross even admitted to almost drawing one on the mirror with dry-erase marker. Haha.
But yesterday, whilst downtown, a Christmas miracle happened. Instead of having to settle for a tiny tree, I found one of two 3 foot trees left! I think they had sold out at the hardware store in Grand Anse because all the students got grabby.

And I found a strand of multi-colored lights that have different functions -dim in and out, blinking, normal, and light-rave party! Maybe there are more, but I was just so excited I couldn't think straight.

The best part was hauling that Christmas tree on a Reggage bus and walking through Lance aux Epines with it. Worth every second. Here is a happy kid with a lighted Christmas tree!

We will need to make some ornaments for it, but first things first, the tree was missing a star. Ross and I had a genius idea and he got to work fashioning a star.

Now, to the untrained eye, this is just a cute paper star, but any Widdison should immediately recognize this as Starlet. This is my favorite Christmas story I grew up hearing. It is the tale of a tiny star who thought she was too small to ever be important when one day she ended up falling from the sky and lighting the stable where baby Jesus lay in the manger. Then as she got brighter and brighter, she rose in the sky and became the most magnificent, beautiful star in the sky! And now she shines on the top of the Petersen Christmas tree!