It’s been a wonderful holiday season around here. Celebrating with a two-year-old is both exhilarating and exhausting, fortunately more the former to help compensate for the latter. I went through our family’s photos and chose some highlights to share, if you’d like to see!
Thanksgiving came late in November (and fell on a beautiful day) this year and kicked off what felt like one of the fastest holiday seasons in memory!
Our new dining table came just in time! (Remember my search?)
Hudson had his first go at Hot Chocolate and was not a fan. Even at luke-warm it came right back out of his mouth. What?!
We missed our chance to get Polar Express tickets from the Sacramento Railroad Museum (they sold out faster than Justin Timberlake!), but still made sure to check out the holiday displays.
We joined Hudson’s girlfriends on a tree-cutting outing (but ultimately decided that we preferred the pre-cut Noble Fir variety).
Hudson helped Aron string lights again. Hudson and I have both grown a lot since last time.
We showed Hudson a holiday movie, settling on the 1964 version of Rudoloph. The abominable snowman “makes loud noise” and Hudson was “a little bit scared.” We’re still talking about it. Later we watched the animated, dialogue-free movie Snowman and that went better.
We visited New York City and met Santa on 34th street.
Hudson decorated–and ate most of the building materials for–his first gingerbread house; and I tried my hand at a yule log.
We spent many nights trying to decorate the tree—which proved tricky when someone goes to bed between 7:30 and 8 pm.
Hudson said “Hooray! I did it!” when he finally topped it off with a star—in the morning.
There were holiday concerts and charitable book club gatherings with friends to enjoy. And Hudson made us now-precious ornaments at school.
After an adults-only evening in San Francisco to see Andrew Bird (I finally tried the ice cream at Bi-Rite), we all went and had a kid-focused weekend in the city, complete with sea lions and streetcars.
We cut that visit early, however—eager to spend more time at home and to celebrate with friends at an annual “Harp & Beer” party. (Where, last year, Hudson got down!)
Evenings around Christmas were spent with cousins visiting from Germany—and decorating (and sampling) Christmas cookies.
And watching holiday movies like Love, Actually.
It was our first holiday with Sawyer (who just turned one).
And, of course, Christmas morning was a joy. (We didn’t intentionally dress Hudson like wrapping paper—that was just a funny coincidence.) Hudson had the best reactions—like when he opened a tiny diesel train from Santa and ran wordlessly outside to start pushing it along his train tracks.
My parents have moved to Davis, so we got to spend the day with both sides of our family. And we learned how many boys it takes to assemble a child’s barbecue set (answer: 3).
Finally, we rung in the New Year with friends, sparkly beverages, and the hot tub. (Aron only rubbed it in that I couldn’t immerse myself fully, oh, a little bit.)
So much to be thankful for!
P.S. Last year’s highlights. And I can’t stop playing Aron’s video.
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