Our granddaughter Emily is 3 and a half now, and this is going to be a wonderful Christmas season. We got started tonight, putting up the Dickens Village that has been in storage since the year she was born. She's ready. It was great fun taking out and remembering all the little pieces and the decade of Christmases it took to collect them. Some buildings were gifts from friends, some boxes have handwritten dates and notes; it took about four hours to assemble it tonight. Scrooge's gloomy suite of rooms always goes back on the hill by the dead tree, the Cratchit cottage is over by the cheerful ale house. The skaters still glide in a tiny figure 8 on the little ice pond, Emily will love that. We also intended to decorate the Christmas tree tonight, but it was hard to get started. The village was too much fun. We'll finish the tree tomorrow morning. Emily comes tomorrow afternoon and will stay over through Wednesday. That's because there's a big snowstorm on the horizon and we don't want to be caught driving around in it. So Emily may be in for a big double-header adventure: Christmas preparations and snowbound at gramma's all in one!
