merry new year and happy christmas! or something like that...

it felt a little like christmas snuck up on me this year, on us really. i think because i've been so busy with work and craft and also that shared custody really compresses an already busy schedule, it was just suddenly christmas. i knew it was coming, and i love preparing for it, but it still surprised me regardless...

we had time to do some fun projects - cookies and homemade snow globes, a few handmade presents to place under our tree and the trees of others. and this year was the first year we had a real tree! i've never had one in all my many years on earth, and this was coco's first as well! we ventured, in time honoured (or something like that) tradition to the garden shop a few blocks from our home to pick a well-selected tree. we brought it home, decorated it, inhaled it's lovely aromas and then watched as it (while still being lovely!) slowly became more and more dehydrated as the weeks passed. coco managed to avoid eating all the candy canes and instead resorted to hiding small candies in the tree, presumably to retrieve later, a moment that often never materialized. when taking down the tree i found many small hidden treasures, and i'm still finding the best ornaments tucked in various small hiding spots all over the house.

we visited santa and cole was adamant that he bring candy. also trains, on second thought. and he posed most carefully and with Best Behaviour on the fat man's knee.

christmas eve was amazing - cole was so interested in the routine: stockings, timing, how santa got here, where the reindeer would eat the carrot. he had a hard time getting down to sleep that night (and that's relative, mind you) but eventually he did. i think i sleep more poorly as i kept expecting him to pad by in the night!

he woke us at a barely respectable 6:20 and we opened gifts slowly until early afternoon. cole played with almost every gift he opened right away, hauling out operation and tractors and "teenager lego" as he calls the regular stuff. we carried on the fun at dinner with steve's family and had a wonderful christmas.

it was magical, to see his eyes and watch his reactions to it all. and next year, i vow, to get started on the hullabaloo a little earlier. :)