Christmas, Sonoran Style

Note to our regular readers: We know, we know, it’s been a long while since we’ve updated, our sincerest thanks to those of you who have stuck with us. Now that we’ve used up all our vacation Thanksgiving and Christmas have passed we should be back to spending our evenings and weekends at home like sensible adults. We’re not making a New Years resolution to regularly update the blog or anything like that, but we’ll try to make it up to our faithful followers (hi grandma & grandpa!). To make up for some lost time, we have for you today: A Mega-Post! Enjoy~

Well, another year has come and gone! I can remember clearly last year thinking to myself, “Please God, don’t let my baby be born on Christmas day!” My sympathies go out to all you Christmas kids: we’re glad to have you, but you definitely got the short end of the stick sharing your birthday with Jesus. 2011 certainly brought about many changes, most notably the birth of our Darling Daughter. This of course means that a few weeks back heralded her very first Christmas! Lovely Wife’s lovely parents graciously hosted us once again at their lovely house as we made the not-so-lovely 13 hour drive to Arizona. Thankfully all the presents good company more than made up for all the time spent on the road.

We got in early enough to see some of our family in Phoenix, then made the trip down to Tucson for the rest of our stay. It’s always fun to see how different parts of the U.S. get into the holiday spirit, and Arizona is no exception. We laughed to ourselves as we drove through the neighborhoods; there were certainly the standard window dressings, pine bough wreaths, and carols at the spinet; but there was more! You need to travel approximately 200 miles before encountering a pine tree of any sort, so folks just get crazy putting lights on anything above ground (which, in the middle of the desert, ain’t much). The parched xeriscaping was comically juxtaposed against decorations intended to conjure visions of the North Pole. Lights were strung from anything with perceived branches and pinned to the adobe houses in lieu of gutters. Don’t even get me started on the lack of chimneys; I don’t have a clue as to what the Sonoran parents tell their kids about how Santa Claus gets inside the house.

But it’s all in good fun and by-and-large I think people realize how silly it is to decorate for such a stereotypically “Winter” holiday in a place whose last recorded White Christmas was almost 25 years ago (and the one before that was 1916!). After all, people don’t need precipitation to enjoy time with their closest family and friends celebrating the birth of Christ. Generous hearts and laughter are certainly not contingent upon freezing temperatures, and the fact that we could eat outdoor-barbecued brisket on Christmas Day will never be counted to their detriment.

A big thanks goes out to the time our family and friends made to spend with us. A double helping of thanks goes out to our awesome free babysitters (hi grandma & grandpa!). A congratulations to Lovely Wife’s middle sister who graduated at semester and a warm hug to Tai Tai (great-grandma) who made the trip out from the coast to spend this time of year with us all. Time and distance can be a tough thing for families, but this bunch definitely make it as comfortable as it can be. We’re looking forward to spending the next Christmas with them already, and many more to come!