It's starting to look like Christmas

Sinterklaas returned to Spain...now it is time to put up the Christmas tree, not before...You don't do that before Dec 6th in Belgium. Well most people don't as it is a sort of unwritten rule, although commercial stores start end of November/ early December with their decorations little by little. 

Even though we were all feeling sleepy after a too short night due to Jan's work's Christmas party at Saturday night, a look in our calendar had revealed to me that it was best to put up the tree this weekend if we didn't want to do that last minute just before Christmas (or stress late night after work).

And so the boxes got pulled down from a tiny attic storage and we got going. The children over decorated the lowest branches of the tree while I tried to redistribute the decorations across the higher branches. We only killed one Christmas ball in the process. 

While I was taking out some other small decorations and tried to give them a spot in the living room, Jan played with his new gadget "Alexa" , the Amazon robot.  The Christmas lights are always plugged in into a smart wall plug that could be programmed or handled via an app.   After some annoying failed attempts (seriously...Alexa is still so stupid! ) , we managed to teach her the command 'Tree on' or 'Tree off' to which she responds accordingly and speaks some "Ho ho ho" comment.  The children were very intrigued but unfortunately Alexa refuses to understand their English commands.   

The night before when we went to the Christmas party from Jans company, we had to pull over in the countryside to wait for a colonne of several dozens of christmas light decorated tractors coming by in some weird parade over the road. Never seen it before but kinda cool . (and yet also a bit deserted and sad in the pouring rain).