It’s December again — how did that happen? Once the dust had settled after Thanksgiving, I pulled out the Christmas ornaments and the artificial tree (“Next year, let’s have a real tree!” said Baki). I can’t help but stop and take stock all that’s happened over the past year. This time last year, we were agonising over changing Baki’s school and the horrible ordeal of moving house. All happily buried in the past now!

My mother made sure I had advent calendars every year and I loved them. Mine were the old school open-a-door-and-coo-at-the-picture kind, but of course advent calendars have progressed a bit since then. Baki is a great fan of the Lego advent calendars, but I thought we’d try something new this year, so I gathered 24 books for him and he’s having a book a day. Of course, this means that Kaya has to have a book a day as well, since he wants to be like his big brother in every way. Don’t tell him that some of his are actually some of my old books wrapped up!

Speaking of reading material, I want to thank Our Growing Paynes for nominating this blog for the 3 Stars Blogger of the Year award. I’ve never gotten an award before, so although it sounded a bit daunting to participate I thought it would be churlish not to. I would like to nominate two blogs that I only found recently and have been enjoying. They are:

Women Living Life After 50 — I love reading Sue’s posts about her daily life, but she recently wrote a really wonderful piece about dealing with grief during the holiday season that I thought was great. I always find that the holidays make me reflect upon loved ones who are no longer with us, and the list only gets longer.

Janey in Mersin — This is an interesting blog written by an Australian woman living in Mersin, a town that is also on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey, but farther east. She writes with humor about the ups and downs of finding her feet in a new place.

The instructions for this award are simple:
1 Select the blog(s) you think deserve the ‘Blog of the Year 2013’ Award
2 Write a blog post and tell us about the blog(s) you have chosen – there are no minimum or maximum number of blogs required – and ‘present’ the blog(s) with their award.
3 Let the blog(s) that you have chosen know that you have given them this award and share the instructions with them – (please don’t alter the instructions or the badges!)
4 Come over and say hello to the originator of the ‘Blog of the Year 2013’ Award via this link – http://thethoughtpalette.co.uk/blog-awards-2/blog-of-the-year-2013-award/
5 You can now also join the ‘Blog of the Year’ Award Facebook page – click the link here https://www.facebook.com/groups/BlogoftheYear/ and share your blog posts with an even wider audience.
6 And as a winner of the award – please add a link back to the blog that presented you with the award – and then proudly display the award on your blog … and start collecting stars…

I hope everyone else is getting off to a roaring start this December as well!