Pre-Christmas Mania

We suspended our usual "museum day" last weekend to take in some of the Christmas fever around town. Generally decorations are a bit subtler here than at home with the exception of Galleries Lafayette, one of the large fancy department stores not far from Matt's workplace. The giant tree made of large plastic blow-up items was a little too big to fit in my camera frame:

 

I can understand the peppermint swirls and stars, and even the pretzels (it's an Alsatian thing) but the giant doughnuts, pizza slices and CACTUS remain a mystery to me. ???

Père Noël, otherwise known as Santa Claus, was there too. The kids were a little dismayed that he didn't ask them what they wanted for Christmas so now we have to send him a letter. Theo never did tell me what Santa was saying to him here...

On the way home we paused to check out an ad for the new comic book series that's coming out. It's a good thing Santa is always watching as I'm not confident that letter to him will actually get written...

 

The next day it was time to pick out a tree! Luckily there is a garden store just across the street from us. I think Matt was happy to hear some encouraging words about our choice of tree.

 Normally people here just tell us we're doing it wrong.

 

Sam never looks for oncoming traffic this carefully. He isn't concerned with a car hitting him, but if his Christmas tree is threatened, look out!

Made it all the way across the street - whew!

When I was growing up we had to wait to put the star on last. Sam was too impatient for that, apparently. Note - no one was injured during the tree decorating.