I was excited for today. We decided to get a tree on December 1st, when the Holland Homies said that Praxis would begin selling live trees.

Holland Homies is a Facebook Group for Expats to share best practices and inside knowledge like where to find stuff like tortillas and corn syrup and to share upcoming events and news.

Charlie woke up today to find a plastic stocking full of marshmallows in his shoe from Zwarte Piet. He wants to save them to make Rice Krispy treats.

He was excited to open the first window of his advent calendar. He says the chocolates here taste better!

After hanging out at the house all morning, we headed out to pick our tree. The guy at Praxis was very friendly and spoke English, but said he’d charge for that service. I love when people are friendly and funny. While we went in to pay for our tree and drove our car around to pick it up, the funny guy forgot and gave our tree to someone else. I can laugh about that, but isn’t that weird?? How does that happen?? I try to not make anything a big deal, and just flow with whatever happens. Luckily my family followed along and we just picked another “Dr. Seuss” tree from The Czech Republic. Juliana didn’t like any of them and the funny guy just told her these trees weren’t from Disneyland. I giggled.

Jeff and I tied the tree on top of the handy minivan, in the cold rain. I think today was the coldest day since we’ve been here! We then walked across the way to the carnival like booth selling the holiday hot item – Oliebollen.

These are really popular on New Year’s Eve and supposedly people line up to buy them. They are dough like pastries, sort of like donut rolls. Some are filled with raisins, cream, apples or just plain and topped with powdered sugar. We took ours home, and I bet these would be great fresh out of the hot oil! I love celebrating new traditions that others love.

Our tree is now home and waiting for Oma and Opa to come back tomorrow to help us decorate it. We didn’t ship any of our Christmas decorations, so we’ll need to buy a few new Dutch ones.

And finally, we had a wonderful dinner with some new friends who invited us over. What a great way to start December! Life is good.