Dear Atria,

Every journey in life begins with a single step, and every step then after gets you closer to your goal. Success comes when one spots an opportunity for which one is prepared, determined and not afraid to try again and again until one accomplishes.

As long as you keep trying, there is no failure, only experiences.

I wish you a successful and happy New Year with lots of accomplishments.

Your dad Farshid

The third photograph is taken from Phase Eight website (copyright to Phase Eight) to show you the cashmere poncho I chose for you on the model. I hope you like it.

Dear Atria,

Wishing you love and togetherness this holiday and always. Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year!

This year I chose for you a wintery and sparkly Cinderella's Wish Charm to remind you that life is full of magic and you are a Princess. I am also sending Mrs Mouse - a little 'friend' and companion for you, filled with love and lots of luck.

Your dad Farshid

Today I attended my first Christmas party of this festive season. I very much enjoyed time spent with my close friends chatting, eating, playing board games and being silly together. We all wore Christmas jumpers and we felt very festive. 

I hope that you are blessed with wonderful friends with whom you can share many beautiful moments and create unforgettable memories during this festive season. Have an amazing time Atria.

Dear Atria, I had a bit of a rough start of the Christmas Day, but finally about 10am, I got out of the bed and opened my Christmas gifts. It’s not so much about the presents, but about knowing that people around me care enough to write a card, make an effort and choose something for me and share with me.

I hope you had a lovely morning today and you enjoyed unwrapping your gifts. I also hope you like what I’ve chosen for you. I thought everyone likes a cozy pyjamas :-)

Wishing you a very joyful festive season. I will be thinking of you during the Christmas dinner and I hope some day we can sit by the same table and share it together. Merry Christmas Atria!

 Dear Atria, I assume you went away for Christmas holidays or were busy with your friends &  family and therefore the Christmas gift I sent you this year has not been yet collected. I checked today and it is still waiting for you at the Woking sorting office. You can arrange delivery via website or using the telephone number provided. You can also go and collect it in person from the sorting office. Please see details below.
I hope you will be able to collect it soon and you will enjoy it.

A new year is all about starting afresh and realising your dreams. Have a Happy New Year Atria and happy beginnings to whatever you want to do or change this year.

​My Mum and Anna's Dad shall continue to live in our hearts through the memories they left behind. We miss them, especially at times like Christmas when the families gather together to celebrate.
​​Hopefully soon the scientists will find a cure for cancer and one day it will be treated as simply as a common cold today. Do you think it is far fetched? Maybe... but, well, years ago a very powerful Egyptian queen died from untreated dental abscess. Today abscess treatment is not only very simple but also widely affordable and accessible to everyone,  even if they are not a King or a Queen. So let’s keep our hopes up.

Below there are pictures of your Christmas card and present which today at 12.51pm postman attempted to deliver unsuccessfully.
Go to Royal Mail website (Tracking number AF257623564GB) and rearrange a delivery or take the card they left at your address to the local sorting office and collect in person. I hope you get it before Christmas.
Wishing you and your family and friends a wonderful, magical Christmas filled with love, joy and happiness. 
Love from dad :-)
​

Dear Atria,
Your grandparents sent you a Christmas card and Christmas wishes.
As they can't sent it to you directly, they have posted it to me, I have taken a picture of the card and their wishes and am putting it below for you to see.
Have a very Merry Christmas

One that I favour to quote is that :- 
"The first person to bring a Christmas Tree into a house, in the way we know it today, may have been the 16th century German preacher Martin Luther. A story is told that, one night before Christmas, he was walking through the forest and looked up to see the stars shining through the tree branches. It was so beautiful, that he went home and told his children that it reminded him of Jesus, who left the stars of heaven to come to earth at Christmas".

One of the main reasons we have the custom of giving and receiving presents at Christmas, is to remind us of the presents given to newborn baby Jesus by the Wise Men: Frankincense, Gold and Myrrh.

• Frankincense was a perfume used in Jewish worship and, as a gift, it showed that people would worship Jesus.
• Gold was associated with Kings and Christians believe that Jesus is the King of Kings.
• Myrrh was a perfume that was put on dead bodies to make them smell nice and, as a gift, it showed that Jesus would suffer and die.

Christmas itself is really about a big present that God gave the world about 2000 years ago - Jesus! One of the most famous Bible verses, John 3:16, says: 'God loved the world so much, that he gave his one and only Son, so that whoever believes in him may not be lost but have eternal life.'.
But still all over the world, families and friends give presents to each other. It is an occasion to treat your loved ones. I bought you couple of present as well and I hope you will like them.

Dear Atria, We have put up our tree and decoration for 2013 Christmas. Do you remember that I wrote to you, that to make our  tree different from previous years we were going to add a new decoration to it tree every year?
Well, this year we added a hand made squirrel to our x-mas tree. See if you can find on the tree the FAIRY we made ourselves? It has golden body made from wrapping paper, gray hair made from carpet and silver wings covered in baking foil and it is hanging on the side opposite me below my shoulder level :o)

Dear Atria, You can pride yourself for being a  Zoroastrian and from a cultural background who celebrates their new year on the first day of the spring, yet you should pride yourself even more for understanding, respecting and taking part in celebrating the new year with those who are from a different cultural background and have different beliefs.
After all, enjoying to take part in celebrating the cultural events of other cultures and other societies is only one of the benefits of living in a multicultural society.

Dear Atria,

We almost have a Royal Christmas Tree. The picture of Queen giving her Christmas Speech also shows part of the Christmas Tree behind her, do you think our tree can be considered to be comparable to that of the Queen's?

Our tree have something which makes it unique and one of the kind, a special fairy we have on the tree. 

I made this fairy last year, I used bits of an old knitted carpet as hair, the end of an used cracker for body and the face, the wand and the star are from what was left over from the cracker, so are the wings but to make them eye catching and shiny I covered the wings with cooking foil.

Try to make a fairy for your Christmas tree, you can use knitting wool, postal string, old cloth cut in strips or anything else you see around you. Be sure to ask your mom for permission to use it first. You can draw the eyes and the rest of the face with coloured pencils or pens, you can decorate the whole body the same way.

HAVING CREATIVITY AND IMAGINATION, ONLY THE SKYS ARE YOUR LIMITS, PERHAPS NOT EVEN THAT AS IMAGINATION KNOWS NO LIMIT.

Dear Atria,
I hope you had a wonderful Christmas filled with joy, love and happiness surrounded by family and friends. I am sorry I am not allowed to share this happy season with you, but I hope we will celebrate together many Christmases in future.
I am sure your Mum and the rest of the family made you feel loved and special, as you are and always will be.
So... have you decorated Christmas tree this year my dear Atria? How did it look like? Did you make any decorations yourself? I would like to see it. You can see our Christmas tree in the photographs below. We made some of the decorations ourselves and it was a great fun. Even Whisky had his sock hanged on the Christmas tree for Santa to fill up with gifts, and you know what... Santa brought him a little something :-)
We celebrated Christmas this year with our Polish friend Dorotka, and our English friends Tommy & Pam, so we had people from three different cultures and traditions around the same table. I think this is the whole beauty of celebrating Christmas - unity and people being together despite of their differences.
In many cultures Christmas is also seen as a time of forgiveness and giving, being kind to others, helping those who are less fortunate than we are, time of sharing. Anna always sends cheques at Christmas to two charities - one is a charity that helps the homeless people and the other one helps people rebuild their life after conflict. Even if you don't have much there are many who don't have even that little and who also, as every human being want to be happy.
I hope you are happy and you also remember about those who are less fortunate.
Happy Christmas my Little Princess!