A Christmasy Kind Of Day

Saturday was a lovely, Christmasy kind of day in the Hunniford household. After spending most of last weekend baking a decorating cookies, it was nice to take a more laid back approach to celebrating this week.

After a lazy Saturday morning complete with cinnamon rolls, we headed out for the anticipated Santa visit. Last year's picture was pretty cute, but this year Sam is much more keenly aware of strangers so I had pretty low expectations. In fact, I expected a picture of a terrified, screaming child with the jolly old man. Fortunately, he was pretty interested in the giant flash on top of the big old camera, so that distracted him from the strange man we just handed him off to with the promise of toys. Clearly he's not thrilled, but he didn't hate us for it either. Maybe next year he'll understand...

We thought he would be pretty excited about lunch at Chick-Fil-A right after, but he's also teething hard core right now. He mostly used the french fries as a way to get the ketchup into his mouth.

In the late afternoon we rode our bikes over to some friends' house to enjoy the annual festivity known as Lights In The Heights. A small portion of our neighborhood (The Heights) takes it upon themselves to put on a lovely, laid back, outdoor Christmas party each year. There's a low-key parade, tons of decked out houses, bands playing outside, food trucks, Santa, etc. We watched the parade (he wasn't too sure about the police horses, but was pretty excited about the roller derby ladies all covered in Christmas lights) and walked around for a while with some friends. I found myself thinking about what the evening would be like in Ohio...I probably would have taken a coat with me.

We had one tired little boy on our ride home, but he had fun. There were so many kids at our friends' house - they all had a ball running all over the place. And he loved the adults too. He saw Chris shake another man's hand a reached his own out to shake Chris's hand. He saw these two sitting on the step and pushed their legs out of the way to join them. Just one of the guys.

After we tucked the tired one into bed, Chris and I capped the evening off with Home Alone. A true classic, and a great way to end the day.

**On the subject of Christmas, I feel it is important to note Sam's affinity for gingerbread men. He steels them. He begs for them. He does care about the sugar cookies - just picks the candies off and leaves the cookie. But the gingerbread men...that's the good stuff!