Annual Shoe Candy

I spent a couple hours of my super-busy Army Wife day yesterday with a thread and needle and a bag of cranberries to make a garland for our Christmas tree. I also made "orangeaments," dried slices of orange with twine threaded through holes at the top, to be hung on the tree. (Last year, I had dried slices of apple as ornaments too, but this year that didn't work out very well so it'll just be the oranges.)

The funny thing about having all these natural ornaments for our Christmas tree is that our tree is made out of plastic and lead.

Anyway. When I was growing up, every year St. Nick - not to be confused with Santa - well, he kind of is, just on a different day - would visit after we went to sleep on the night of December 5th. He'd leave candy in our shoes for us to discover in the morning. I'm pretty sure the reason he visited us and skipped most of the other people in the U.S. (and Korea) is that my mom's family is German, and St. Nick is also German, so he likes us. He still visits me, and now Joe, too.

I got the best of three seasons: Christmas candy, Cadbury creme eggs, and a caramel and marshmallow and chocolate pumpkin. St. Nick knows exactly what my favorites are. I love how the cranberry garland was used to decorate, too.

Joe got a lot less than me, probably because St. Nick thought he'd be happier that way. Just one box of Moose Munch and one Hillshire Farms lunchmeat tupperware full of handmade sugar-free peanut butter cups that tasted like they probably should have been thrown away but St. Nick probably ran out of chocolate after making a second failed batch of them and decided to just go with it. Still, half of the peanut butter things are gone.

Maybe I'll have some candy left by Monday. Probably not. That box of Milk Duds is already empty.