We could give Charlie Brown a run for his money...

Wow, it's been so long since we've updated, I'm truly sorry. But we've been traveling for what feels like forever and only just returned last week. And trust me, it takes that long to recover from jet lag in Australia. And because of our being out of the country, we're a little behind on our Christmas decorating. Which brings me to the main subject about this blog.

One of the few...what's the word...flaws that Matt has, is that he is lacking a little bit in the Christmas spirit department. He's a very practical person, and sometimes he can't understand why do something like decorate or wrap presents to be opened on Christmas when he can just give me the present as he buys it. And don't even get me started on his belief (or lack thereof) in Santa Claus. Now I'm totally a Christmasaholic. I love this time of year, I love the music, the lights, the feeling of goodwill toward men and the slight nip in the air. I love the food, and sitting in the living room with the lights off looking at the twinkling Christmas tree. I love shopping and getting the perfect gift for some one, and yeah I like getting gifts too (most people do, come on admit it).

Well, since we got back we haven't really done much as far as decorating. Matt is currently not working (his contract expired at the end of November and he's unlikely to pick up work again until January) we knew this was coming and we planned for it. But also with a baby on the way and mucho bucks having been spent on providing for said baby, we just don't have a whole lot left over for grand decorations. Which is fine with Scrooge McMatt, but not so much for me.

I have been teasing Matt about his lack of Christmas spirit and how it is not something that will continue too be acceptable in our house, especially next year when the baby comes. He's been taking it all in good humor, but that hasn't stopped him from trying to lure me over to the dark side. "Bah humbug" he tells me! Believe me he's got a long road ahead of him on that one. However I'd pretty much resigned myself to the fact that this year, Christmas would have to primarily be in my heart.

But, my parents happen to be the coolest people in the world and sent us a package. Inside the package were some much loved and craved s'mores poptarts (its not me, its the baby who wants them) as well as a mini Christmas tree complete with 'lights' and ornaments that can actually be hung on the tree. They also sent stockings for Santa to fill (because despite Matt's Grinch attitude, he has been a good boy this year). I set up the Christmas tree and half heartedly put some ornaments on. And sighed to myself more than once how challenging it is to be married to a grinch whose heart is three sizes to small. Once the tree was semi set up, we weren't sure where to display it. We have such a small flat with limited space there's just not much room.

This is where the Christmas miracle comes to play. After having only a half decorated tree for a few days, Matt somewhat grudgingly helped me finish putting the ornaments on the tree (I had all my best Christmas songs playing in the background, he was powerless to resist) and try to find a home for it. We finished the tree and it looked fine, but a little empty. We decided that it needed a star. But what could we use? I grabbed some notebook paper and hesitantly started thinking about how I was going to go about making a star (for those who know me, I'm so not good with things like this, it seems simple, but to me it's not) Matt seeing my distress, agreed to cut out the star (I am 5 months pregnant after all and supposed to stay away from unnecessary stress). He cut it out and to our delight, it actually resembled a star! However we couldn't have the star on lined notebook paper, so I looked for something to color it with. Matt produced a highlighter, but it didn't really do much. So Matt came up with the idea of cutting out yellow post it notes to be taped onto the notepaper star. He carefully measured and cut and taped various bits of post it notes until we finally had a beautiful yellow star to top off our tree. Then he suggested that we wrap our Christmas presents (we each got one small gift for the other) and put them under the tree. Or in this case under the chair that the tree was sitting on. Then Matt thought it would be cool to place the ornaments for a real tree (that were too heavy for our little one) around the base of the tree. See, we stole my sister Cyndi's idea and have tried to purchase an ornament from every country we've visited.

We got a package from my Aunt and that was placed under the tree. Our only two Christmas cards were placed around it and we were feeling pretty festive. For the rest of the night we admired our little Tree on a Chair and talked about how nice it was.

Here was its first home, on what we like to call the 'eatin' chair. Notice our American bough Xbox, to convert the voltage we have to use that large bulky transformer sitting next to it. Attractive eh?

Today, Matt woke up and decided that the chair was not an appropriate place for our tree. Nope, our little Christmas tree deserved its own place of honor. In our living room we have a book case. Only one of the shelves actually has books on it. The rest are papers (important and not) and over all junk that has collected on the shelves simply by nature of being a convenient place to put things. Well, Matt in his quest to create the perfect space cleaned off the shelves (I did help, but even I thought his ideas were getting a bit grand for the situation), moved things from the bottom shelves to the not used top shelf and then completely removed one shelf to create a large area of space. Then he painstakingly moved the (kind of unsteady) Christmas tree, all the ornaments, cards, presents etc into its new home. I pointed out that while it was a good space, our little one bulb light in our living room didn't really reach there very well and now the tree was in the shadow. We tried to come up with a solution, we don't have a lamp that we could place over there to shine on it...but as Matt pointed out, we do have a flashlight!

I have to admit, I was a little skeptical, a flashlight? How would that work? Its not a very big one, it was a stocking stuffer from my dad from last year and laying it on the ground wouldn't be very effective. But my cute husband, now bursting with the Christmas spirit, and humming 'Winter Wonderland' to himself would not be deterred. He rigged it so that the tiny flashlight could hang from the top shelf and when turned on, shine down onto the tree.

I have to admit. I was impressed and it works very well.

So where I thought it would take me a few years and a few kids to bring Scrooge McMatt over to the fairy light side, I was very impressed that he was able to get into the spirit so readily this year. Not only that, but he's been on the look out for me for candy canes everywhere he's been. He doesn't like them, but I love them. Who would've thought that London would be sold out of candy canes? We can't find them anywhere. Not in stores big or small, retail or grocery. It's a little worrying to me that the great candy cane shortage of '08 is not being picked up by every media outlet in the country. Ah well.

This is Matt working the tree's new home:


Take note of the suspended flashlight hanging from the next shelf:


And finally the finished product!


And a farther away shot:


So now the Ngai household is brimming with the Christmas spirit! Music is constantly hummed, stockings have been hung by the calendar with care and we look forward to spending our first Christmas as a family together.

I hope you all have wonderful Christmases as well. Oh, and tomorrow we (hopefully) find out what gender we're having baby-wise. My sister Cyndi, who is due a month after me, just found out she's having a girl, so we'll see. Watch this space!

Merry Christmas!