Life In The Land Of Oz

We had a wonderful first Christmas together here in Kansas. It was difficult to be away from family and friends, but we very much enjoyed the rest and relaxation of the holiday.

As you can see, we finally got a Christmas tree following much discussion about whether we would get a real or artificial tree (i.e. whether the dogs would be less likely to eat a real or fake tree) and whether or not John would need to build a fence to go around the tree to keep the dogs away from it. In the end, we decided on a fake tree, but then after an entire day of shopping at countless stores we realized that artificial trees over 4 feet tall were out of our price range.


We ended up at thrift shop and found a decent looking tree for $20. Success! Disregarding the "as is" tag on it, we gleefully paid for the tree - releived and happy that our tree search had finally ended.


The entire top broke off as John carried it out of the store. We made a few trips out to the car to pick up all of the pieces and branches that had fallen off in the store and out through the snow-covered parking lot. Nothing could quench our Christmas spirit though. We had a tree to call our own!

We brought it inside and got to work setting it up. It took alot of duct tape, zip-ties, and even a tire-pressure gage used as support (not to mention John's ingenuity) - but we finally got the tree up and looking good. We also found out that the dogs left the tree alone for the most part, so no chicken wire fence (i.e. monstrosity) was needed. Hooray!

I was like a little kid this year, anticipating Christmas. I starting begging John 3 days before Christmas to let me start opening presents. (He said no.)









Right: The loot from our stockings. We got all sorts of toys - silly putting, air horn, whoopie cushion, silly straws...we are such kids.

With John finished with finals and officially on break, we wanted to take some time to do things that we don't normally get a chance to do (e.g. explore Kansas, go out to dinner, and just hang out.) We heard about a small town called "Little Sweden," or Lindsborg, which is about 2 hours away from us. I read that they were supposed to be having a Christmas event from 2-8pm on Saturday, so we decided to take a day trip to this little Swedish town.

We arrived in Lindsborg a little before 2, so we walked around the town (despite the bitter cold!) and visited the all of the shops. Only about half of the stores were open, but they all had signs in their windows advertising the day's events of caroling, shows on an outdoor stage, free hot cider and cookies, and tram tours of the Christmas lights. After being in town for a few hours and not seeing any Christmas activity, we were seriously beginning to wonder what was going on. John was ready to leave and were were both miserablely cold, but we went to get some food with hopes that things had just been delayed.

We ate at a little sandwich shop where John had a "Swedish reuben" - turkey, swiss cheese, sauerkraut, and lingonberries. I had yummy Swedish pancakes, which are really much more like crepes. After lingering over a dessert of cookies and hot chocolate, we went back outside to find that still nothing was going on in the town!

I was determined that since we had driven two hours, we were at least going to wait for the free cookies and cider (even though I had just eaten my fill of purchased cookies and hot chocolate.) I convinced John to hold out a little bit longer by going into "Old Stuga" - the local bar. John made me promise that if nothing had started by the time we left Old Stuga, that we would give up and drive home. At about 6:30pm, we went back outside and walked up and down mainstreet - still nothing. It was like they had cancelled Christmas! No cookies, no hot cider, no caroling, no dancing....nothing! We did see the tram parked along the street - but it was empty with no driver.

John could tell how sad I was when we got back in the car, so he decided to drive around town and at least find the Christmas lights for ourselves. We drove around the whole town and....no Christmas lights!

Our day was redeemed a bit when we stopped at a "Christmas house" on the way home. There's a house right outside of Wamego that does a Christmas light show every night for a few weeks before Christmas. We pulled into their driveway where they had signs telling us to tune our radio station to a certain channel. All of their Christmas lights are set to music! It was amazing. The show lasts about 10 minutes and consists of 3 different Christmas songs. Seriously incredible.

One of the paintings on a building around town.























John with one of the many Dala horses around town.




































Old Stuga - we did get a pretty cool T-shirt here as a souvenier of our trip.

We had our first real snow here in Wamego. It snowed for two days; we got about 8 or 9 inches of snow total (even though "they" were calling for more). We mostly stayed indoors and tried to stay warm, since last night it was -15 with the windchill!