So once again I have my shorn my rented tree of its pretty adornments and sparkily lights awaiting the nice university students from the Forestry School to pick it up and as always it seems too soon. But I complain too much as we get a full extra week here in Spain thanks to the blessed kings who arrive on Jan 6th, so I was able to resist this moment until a full halfway through January and enough complaining and lets review how the silly season went!

City Lights

This year Thanksgiving fell so late everything got off to a rather late start, and both my main partner and crime and I were so tied up in the Uni and work that we were not able to see the city lights on the their first night being lit (Thursday 28th). As we did a staycation here in Madrid and did not head to the north as in past years we discussed doing a drive around downtown to see the lights, but this plan never materialized. But I did see pretty lights, on one excursion to downtown we saw pretty lights in the Retiro and went in and checked them out (first two pictures) and then on our New Years celebration at the Casino de Madrid on Gran Via (third picture)

Tree

The earliest that Barbara (partner in christmas crime) and I were able to meet at the Forestry School in the Cuidad Universidad was Wednesday December 4th. I arrived before Barbara and did a location scouting and found the perfect tree:

But once again as always, economic realties always ruin all best laid plans: I had neither enough cash for the beauty nor the house with vaulted ceilings for it. Fortunately Barbara arrived shortly after and found and absolute beauty for plan b:

As always, in the lot it seemed a lot smaller than in our doll house living room but it was just perfect:

Advent Calendar

As is the tradition I did an advent calendar with the only differation this year is that half the days were for our house and the the other half for my other daughter and mother-in-law who live close by. The determination of where it was to go was written on the back.

Baking

This year I came out of the gate strong making a new recipe of Pfeffernusse cookies early in season from a Washington Post article that a cousin sent over:

And I even made a batch of iced butter cookies that I took to work:

but I never made multiple batches of different ones cookie bake style to share with neighbor and friends. Oh well, there is always next year!

I did make multiple kings cakes which being my wife’s favorite are very gratifying to make:

Movies

This year we did not see Christmas Vacation! OMG. But we did see a new move that was equaly silly:

• Deck the Halls
• Planes, Trains and Automobiles
• How the Grinch Stole Christmas

New Traditions?

This year there were two new things that not sure if they will become traditions or not:

• Arcade competition:
• Gilda competition:

Closing Thoughts

And so this was my second post Holidays blues post. Once again I can’t wait until the next silly season!

Thanks for reading and feel free to give feedback or comments via email (andrew@jupiterstation.net).