Nora's First Christmas

When my parents came to visit last week, they brought two suitcases, one for clothes and one for Christmas presents. So for the first time our little plastic Christmas tree looked like it should, rising up from a sea of wrapped toys and books and other goodies. In Spain (in my family at least), there is no tradition of putting presents under the tree to incite anticipatory speculation torture like we have in the United States. Here you just give the gift on Christmas or Epiphany and the wrapping paper only serves to conceal the item for about seven seconds before it is ripped open. They don't know what they are missing.

Now that's what I call a Christmas tree!

Nora was fascinated by having a tree in the house.

Nora's American grandparents brought her two Christmas ornaments to commemorate her first Christmas. The first has a little teddy bear with a bottle and pacifier, and the second is a little ceramic rattle.

I look forward to future Christmases when we pull this ornament out of the box and then go look up this photo to remember how she was this Christmas: Absolutely beautiful.