Saturday, December 1, 2012

Day 1

(Waiting for the parade to go by.)

I woke up this morning to Tami frantically asking me "do you know what we forgot?" Turns out it was more of a test because she kept asking. "Our family tradition?" What? "Our new since last year family tradition!?" What?

Ever seen those little advent calendars with chocolate behind each number counting the days until Christmas? Last year Tami used a 24 organic egg carton, covered the half spheres with numbered paper covers, and hid a note in each that said something special that we would do that day for Enzo to discover.

That's what we had apparently forgotten and that's why Tami was trying to figure out what we would do this year on day 1 do December as there were no 24 pack egg cartons around and that's why Tami's laptop was open as she searched for special to do ideas.

Before long, Tami had a couple of popsicle flowers (leftover crafts from Ana's first birthday) with numbers on them in a vase and day 1, flower 1, had a little note attached to the stem. The other flowers will have to wait until tomorrow for us to finish adding the special to dos. But as I was saying, we had day 1 and when Enzo pulled out the flower it said "Tree Lighting." That's right, Sunnyvale had its downtown tree lighting and visit from Santa today. That's not all. Because Tami was on line looking for interesting things to do, she also found out about the Lake View Parade which we had never heard of before and which was happening this morning.


Turns out there is a neighborhood in Sunnyvale called Lake View that puts on its own parade every year and has been for decades. Our ordinary Saturday morning quickly became a super cool Saturday morning. Showers, out to breakfast, and then to a community parade complete with marching band, choir, two old cars, Santa, and more. As Tami noticed, it was probably the smallest parade in the world but it was still fun to watch and to enjoy the shindig afterwards at the local elementary school where the parade stopped. Then we went home for lunch and a nap before heading out again to downtown to listen to that same middle school choir for it's second performance of the day, watch the tree lighting, and wave to Santa and Mrs. Claus as the fire department dropped them off at the big tree.






Thank goodness for new "traditions." Welcome December.


And here is something cool. Enzo was writing on paper that he found and started telling Tami about what he was writing and drawing. Then he said "Papi, P is for Papi" and drew this:


That's a circle and a stick! That's a P!

And as Tami said, that's the first letter he has drawn. Captured here for your appreciation.

An impressive day 1. Here is how it looked just before bed.