Anne Geddes, Perverted Santa, and the Nightmare Before Christmas

Oh, hello!

It's been a while, I know.  But you've been busy making merry too, right?

With Coleson's first Christmas, I was determined to make it special, which meant doing all of traditions and adding several new ones... even if he slept through most of them.  My sister-in-law Em pointed out that he was too young for most toys and can't even hold his head up properly, so the best way to have fun with him around Christmas is to go "full-on Anne Geddes and shit."

Her point:  dress him up in a million fun Christmas outfits and take pictures:  

Santa Coleson:

Kissable Coleson:

And my favorite outfit... Dapper Coleson!

Is this not the cutest onesie ever??  It was the sweetest gift, and he looked so cute in it!  Comfy and dressy!

This was also the year of our first Christmas card.  Never have sent one out before,  but I decided since it was Coleson's first, I could indulge.  I wanted to make it funny and kinda creative so I chose an infographic template that broke down our year into random facts.

Without further ado, here's our Christmas/ New Year's Card this year:

I just loved it!  It was kind of graphic and cool while being a bit different than the usual Christmas card.

We used this picture from our venture out to visit Santa.  Yes, our little guy is wearing a Santa outfit, thank you very much.

The top part summarized our trip to wine country and Dan's crushing disappointment with the Redskins' performance this year:

The bottom part summarized the somewhat perverted Santa visit we had.  See under "Three Things About This Photo":

Dan and I did our usual tradition of visiting the fancy schmancy Jefferson Hotel to see their annual gingerbread creation.  This year's was a 400 pound gingerbread sleigh covered in thirty pounds of ribbon candy and over four hundred Jelly Bellies.

As you can see, Coleson was riveted.

We also did our annual Christmas light tour.  This year,we found a bizarre and oh-so-creative house that paid tribute to Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas.  Anybody seen that movie where the Halloween characters try to take over Christmas?  The owner must be an artist because he created larger than life sculptures of characters from Christmastown:

See the wreath on the door?  Attention to detail, I tell you.

He carved out over thirty Christmas and Nightmare Before Christmas jack-o-lanterns and lit them up:

Yes, Santa is being kept captive in the background:

     Of course, we finished by going to our favorite house: the one an elderly couple always decorates in memory of their son, who loved Christmas.  It is such a labor of love.

I'll skip over details of our family Christmas, but will say if you haven't played the adult version of Headbanz while drunk then you need to!

This was the year when Bethany got engaged (yay!  Already planning her shower and Bachelorette!!), so there were a lot of funny gifts to her.

Coleson must have been good because look at all the loot Santa brought!  

Hope your holiday was full of love and happy memories!