As much as I despise the over commercialization of Christmas, its hard to feel the season around here as Christmas is almost entirely absent from stores, streets or the TV.  Such a contrast to our time in Manila when Christmas started in September and drove us nuts after too many months of Christmas carols.

I also have enough going on that I haven’t really thought about it, except that its nice to go out and have an excuse to be a tourist and buy some things for the tree. Little tourist bits and pieces, reminders of our time here, are something that I would never usually buy — except for the Christmas tree.  I like not having them around as dust collectors for most of the year, but its so fun to pull them out every Christmas and enjoy them all over again.   Here’s the 2014 additions to the collection: