Man, the days fly by! I'm preparing for our St. Nicolas celebration tomorrow night, though I hope we'll be able to have it, as there is snow in the forecast! I can't believe it, two years in a row, the first snowfall on the 5th of December! Last year we had to postpone, I hope that won't be necessary this time.

Our friends Chuck, Christine and Mallory are coming, Mallory was sick with strep today, but started her antibiotics this morning, so she should be fine tomorrow night. My dad is coming too. We're giving everyone one gift with a poem and I ordered a bunch of special St. Nicolas candy.

Today and the past few days, I primarily worked on decorating the house for Christmas and writing and sending out Christmas cards. I finished both of those things today. The house looks great, if I say so myself!

Five things I'm grateful for today:
1. Saskia's supercute little voice, telling the girl that lost her arm to a shark attack surfed again today (her jazz teacher told her)
2. Ok, this is a selfish one, I realize, but Katja came home with menstrual cramps so I allowed her to cancel her math tutoring, allowing for a break for both of us (usually Thursdays are crazy with tutoring at 3:30 and dance at 4:30)
3. Kai's popularity with the boys in the neighborhood! I can't imagine I was ever worried about his social skills! He has at least one friend over every day, but usually more than one.
4. Rick and his always sunny disposition.
5. Brynna, happily asleep at my feet, keeping them warm in the cold.

Since I've been keeping a Dutch blog as well, it's been difficult to keep up with both, but today I feel I kind of miss blogging on a more personal level. The other blog is more meant to tell Dutch speaking people about our lives here. I'd like to use this blog a little more for personal thoughts, like my 5 things to be grateful for.

So, I'm starting right now:
1. the SUN! I'm so glad to be living in a climate, where cloud cover hardly ever lasts longer than a day.
2. The month of December, for some reason I am *really* looking forward to the holidays this year.
3. Our fortune, the kids took Angels off the Salvation Army tree this weekend and we're going to shop for them this afternoon. Seeing the simple wishes of those kids makes me realize how much we have to be grateful for.
4. Spending 4 fun days together with the family over Thanksgiving made it hard to start the school/workweek again, but also made me realize what a fun family we have, just the 5 of us.
5. The realization at Thanksgiving dinner that our lives are darn near perfect (the pessimist in me keeps worrying something is going to happen that will wipe the happiness away in one sweep, though :().