Christmas Past

The Twelve Days of Christmas are over. Most of us probably have our trees down (except me…), but let's get in our Christmas time machine. All of Iceland goes all out with their Christmas decorations, but not in a tacky, over-the-top way. More like in a sparkly-magical-wonderland kind of way. There were live trees on the sidewalks of Reykjavik, whimsically decorated the shop windows, and a postbox to send a letter to "the Icelandic Santa." And I do believe I discovered where Anthropologie gets some of its ideas!

(I do apologize that some of these photos are blurry. The limited and dim daylight was a pain in the hiney sometimes!)

The Christmas Goat outside IKEA. It is held down with construction equipment, and managed to escape fire this year!

Milk, Christmas Milk to be specific. Do you know what makes it different from regular milk? Not a thing. But there are Christmas Lads on each carton, which surely must make it taste more festive!

I loved this window. Little shreds of gold leaf suspended on monofilament strung from the top of the window to the bottom.

I hate that this picture turned out blurry. The fairy lights in the branches and the trees were so, so pretty. Let's just pretend I was going for a bokeh effect. Yeah, that's the ticket!

The day that the Christmas tree was supposed to be lit, a huge wind storm came through. It was the most incredible wind I have ever been in. So it canceled the tree lighting — and it took broke the tree (a gift from Norway, as it has been for the past 50 years) in half. (There are not many trees in Iceland, let alone enough to supply a giant national tree every year.) After breakfast we saw the crane taking it down.

So the next day, the mayor of Reykjavik cut down a tree somewhere, and we had to watch the tree lighting on the Internet from home.

I hope a look back at these vignettes of Reykjavik at Christmastime have made your day a little more sparkly! I guess I can take the tree down now.

The Conclusion

Sigh. Avoidance is a coping mechanism, right? But it doesn't fix anything. It just delays the inevitable. The inevitable being that this dream came true, but now is over. It was one month ago today that we returned from our trip. One month ago at this moment we were checking into our hotel in Boston before flying home the next day. And now it is the last day of the year.

Our last day in Iceland was as special and magical as every other day that we were there. We had been invited to spend the afternoon at the Blue Lagoon, including a floating massage for this tired mama and dinner for us all at LAVA after having a long soak in the water.

Unfortunately we didn't get any pictures while in the water (you do not want to drop your camera or phone in that water), but just trust me on this: It was fantastic. Warm water, steam, a waterfall. My floating massage was unforgettable. I can't think of anywhere else where you can get a massage in warm water while hail and snow pelt your face. We were so well taken care of by Edda and Omar, who were so incredibly sweet and nice. Omar even brought his little girl in to meet us before he left for the night. They had closed off an entire changing area just for us, and had candles lit and towels, robes, and shoes for us. And there was more cake (!), as well as fruit, tea, and chocolates. I can't get over how great they were us. It was so, so special. We saw a helicopter there, which we found out later was Jay Z and Beyonce. I can't imagine that they got better treatment than we did, because we were treated like royalty.

Driving out to the Blue Lagoon. This is about 1:30 in the afternoon.

Pull over to take a picture, turn around to see a cave!

Make sure you wash all your parts before going in! All your parts. All. Your. Parts.

Kevin took these two photos from inside the restaurant, so sorry about the refection in the window.

The wonderful, sweet, and beautiful Edda who invited us to this incredible day at the Blue Lagoon.

And, well, that's it. I hope that you enjoyed coming along on our trip with us. I can't believe we went. I can't believe it happened. We had done a lot of reading about Iceland and have been drawn to the country for a long time. But being there was just as awesome as we thought it would be, yet even better too. Even though the Make a Wish thing was a disaster, it actually was a blessing, a huge blessing. 

This whole wish came true because of the kindness of people all over the world who were touched by the story of our girl. Love and kindness made this dream possible. We met people and had experiences that we might not have had otherwise. We have made new friends in Iceland who we hope to visit again as soon as possible. 

Thank you all for believing that a wish can come true.