Tis the Season

Tis the season for giving, reflecting, and celebrating. In the wake of what happened in Connecticut, I can say that we are doing a lot of reflecting and snuggling our little boy a little closer. I have no profound thoughts or words to share other than my heart aches for those children and their families and it is making me extra thankful as Christmas draws near. 

Noah and I went up to SF to meet some friends for lunch. He made it his mission to find the dirtiest items and proceed to touch them all.

I also have no eloquent transition to share more happy happenings around our life (how do they do it on the Today Show...and here is the weather!). Let's just go through my list above.

Giving. While I hope to get more involved in active community giving in the coming years with Noah, this year I am pretty sure I have donated a dollar, five, ten, in about 15 different locations. Every retailer seems to be in support of something and I gladly offer to round up to the next dollar to support whenever I can. 

Celebrating. We certainly are good at this. I feel like we have already celebrated enough for it to be January 2nd! While the schedule can run us ragged sometimes, we are certainly blessed to have that many people to share in festivities with. 

I don't have a picture of Mr. and Mrs. Von Rohr (whom we celebrated with with a feast!), so you get a picture of Hoffman Von Rohr instead ;-).

We celebrated as mommies and just so happened to meet Dusty Baker while all gussied up for the night.

We made our annual trip to Union Square to participate in holiday mayhem. And mayhem it was...more below.

Reflecting. We are so excited to celebrate Christmas with our one-year-old this year. While last year was certainly special, our first with Noah, this one feels like our real first. He was such a peanut last year and this year he will be running around, causing havoc, and making the holidays even brighter. 

Last year's visit to the city.

As I mentioned above, Scott and I have instituted a mandatory Union Square trip every holiday season. We take a deep breath and set out into the craziness that is downtown at the holidays. We did this before Noah was born (and it was much easier, living in the city) but so far we are 2 for 2 with our little guy. 

It takes strong coffee (or an empty hot chocolate cup) to get through the chaos.

That hat. Could you die?!

Noah's first time in gloves. Surprisingly, he left them on!

We headed in for respite and a little lunch. Noah thought this would be a nice opportunity to practice his fine climbing skills.

And we walked out to this. About a million santas running around downtown. Apparently this is a thing (dress up like Santa and go bar hopping) and we are the last ones to know about it. It was something to see!

All that coffee and still asleep in the stroller.

A quick update on the health of my patients I mentioned last week....Scott is back up and running. Noah is just starting to be himself again. Turns out, round one of antibiotics was ineffective so we made another trip to the doctor and got new antibiotics to hopefully kick these ear infections to the curb! So far, we are seeing progress; my clingy koala is finally happy to be on his own two feet again. PHEW!

Just to be safe, I decided to disinfect Noah's toys. We are not going another round with this cold/flu/ear thing!

And there you have it. Now it is time to pack up and head east for some St. Louis Christmas festivities. I can't wait!