Christmas in July

7/1/10 Holiday bows, hand-painted towels, Jesus figure, and pewter pendant, given away

Yesterday Chase took his first official swim in the pool, which we prepared him for by slathering him with four and a half gallons of sunscreen. He seemed to enjoy himself, particularly when Joanna dunked her own head under the water and then came up directly in front of him.

When we got back to our apartment, the temperatures were in the 90s, we were sweaty and grimy, and the Brilliant Boy was hot and tired.

Naturally, thoughts turned to Christmas.

You may recall, Dear Readers, that one of my great downsizing feats of the past year was dealing with literally dozens of boxes of holiday decorations. It became known as The Great Christmas Downsize and it occupied at least thirteen blog posts. Go ahead and try to identify them all -- I need the web traffic.

Actually, getting rid of as much Christmas stuff as we did in a baker's dozen worth of installments is pretty efficient, if I do say so myself. And today's entry (number fourteen by my count) may just finish the job.

Joanna's Aunt Jane visited us back in April, and we got her in on the act, managing to hand off several Christmas items to her and her family. Glad to do it, glad to do it. However, some time later, Joanna found a few more goodies that she knew Jane would just adore.

As has apparently become a habit (see here and here), rather than downsize those things before leaving Maine, we chose instead to cart them all the way to Colorado before sending them off to her. At least the priority mail postage to Florida is the same from Denver as it is from Casco.

Merry Christmas, Jane. We're certainly in the spirit, here!