Feliz Navidad

It's been a while that I've participated in A'lil Hoohaa's monthly photo blog challenge. This month's theme being Feliz Navidad gives me an opportunity to talk about the Holidays - one of the most beautiful times of the year, right? 

I tried to keep a good balance between stress and fun, and to stop and smell the gingerbread every once in a while, and all in all I did OK. 

We managed to visit the Coca-Cola Truck. It was super crowded and we didn't want to wait in line for a personalized Coke bottle or a picture with Coca-Cola Santa, but we did listen to Melanie Thornton's Wonderful Dream and enjoyed the beautiful truck.

This year we had another series of Elf on the Shelf visits. Our Elf's name is Cookie, and she's been with us since 2012. You can see about our adventures here.

Many villages set up a public advent calendar: businesses and families decorate a window that they unveil on their assigned evening in December, along with festive food and beverages.  We had ours on the 13th.

Like almost every year we had my parents over for Christmas Eve, and you know what that means: cleaning, decorating, cooking, baking for pretty much the whole day for a couple of hours to enjoy it. Well...

For the past 90+ years, between Christmas and New Year's there is a hockey festival going on in Davos, a resort in the Swiss Alps. It's called Spengler Cup. For five days six teams compete and fight for the cup in the final game on December 31st. One of the sponsors likes to invite a bunch of kids to train with those stars. Colin was among the lucky ones who got to attend, and what a blast he had. He was assigned to  KalPa Kuopio, a team from the Finnish Hockey League - the one that later turned out to win the tournament. So in addition to the picture I also give you the video I made - enjoy!

Those were my five, I hope you enjoyed them. For more Feliz Navidad head over to A 'lil Hoohaa's blog and check out the other contributions.