Christmas Season 2010

Last December was crazy busy for us, as it is for most everyone. We started off the Christmas season with the tree lighting in Winchester. It was really quite an event. The event was held in the town common and it was filled with families and strollers. The evening began with a few carols from the local 6th graders. Then the Winchester fire trucks came roaring in with their lights on and sirens going, and Santa waving from the back of the last truck. As Santa's firetruck made the loop around the town common, the trees lit up one-by-one as he passed by. Adrian and I just looked at each other--we had totally moved to Beaver Cleaver Land. After all the trees were lit, Santa parked his firetruck and stuck around to hear what all the kiddies wanted for Christmas. Since Veronica is too young to be waiting in line for Santa outside in the cold, we headed for Starbucks! (Sorry, no good photos of the tree lighting in the town common. Maybe next year!)

The following day we went shopping for our Christmas tree. Here is a photo of Veronica and Adrian looking for a good tree, followed by a photo of the decorated tree in our living room:

 

Here is a photo of us in front of our house with the icicle lights put up:

A friend of ours (who had been campaigning for us to move to Winchester for the past several years) had a Santa party one weekend in early December. One of her co-workers works as Santa on the side and he agreed to come to her house so that her son and her friends' kids could have some Santa time without all that craziness at the mall. Needless to say, we were very relieved. We had already decided that Veronica is too young so we were not doing the mall thing this year, but this little party was a nice alternative. I am hoping that our friend Jen does this every year. This photo shows me (and Santa) trying to warm Veronica up to the whole idea. You can see she is not amused. Not at all. I was hoping proximity to Santa for about an hour, as well as seeing all the older kids' excitement would convince her he wasn't so scary.

 And then we finally tried to actually put her on Santa's lap. She was having none of it:

Luckily, Jen's basement has a huge playroom filled with toys so Veronica recovered pretty quickly:

 This is a photo we took with the host, Jen:

We drove down to NYC to spend Christmas with my father, stepmother, brother, and his boyfriend Erik. Here is a photo of us at dinner. Jose really outdid himself with dinner, it was delicious!

 The first gift that Veronica opened was a toy laptop from her Ninong (godfather). She loved it. Look at that concentration!

She had way too many gifts to open before bedtime so we saved most of them for the following day. She had a great time opening gifts.

Click here for more photos from December 2010.