sweet Christmas loot

for his first Christmas, Caleb made out like a fiend. here he is with all his presents:
clothes, shoes, an activity blanket, a music box, books, a ducky, a xylophone, and his bumbo. quite a take. in all the excitement, i realized on Christmas day, that we had not gotten him anything from us. bad mommy! but then i realized i bought him a ton of books last month just because, and decided that that was his unplanned early Christmas present. he's got way more than he can use right now anyway.

because of alot of general craziness this month, part of which was a mad dash to get out our cards and gifts on time, we ended up putting up our Christmas tree 2 days before Christmas, and since we were basically putting it up for Caleb at that point, we just went ahead and put it in his room so he could see it as much as possible. he has a thing for lights, and invariably stares at them, so we thought he'd get a kick out of it. here he is admiring said tannenbaum from below:
unfortunately by the time it's dark and he can really see the lights, he's a bit too cranky to appreciate it. here he is sitting in front of it:
our tree has almost entirely unique ornaments, and following a semi-tradition my mom started, we thought it would be neat to get caleb his own ornament each year, to start a collection he can take with him when he has his own family. this is his first ornament:
it's a shame that Caleb will probably never remember having lived in Hawaii or be old enough to really appreciate it through activities such as snorkeling, hiking, etc., but it will always be part of our memories of these precious times with him, and i'm sure he'll hear plenty about it when he grows up. so we decided a tropical fish ornament would be fitting. i hope he likes it.

we had a good Christmas, we went to a Christmas eve service, and Caleb decided he wanted to nurse through pretty much the whole thing, but luckily they dimmed the lights and i don't think we bothered anyone. we had Christmas dinner at a friend's house, which makes Christmas much nicer and takes away some of the feeling of sadness from not getting to spend the holidays with family. and i think i can say, holding and looking down at the huge little miracle in my arms, that i felt more blessed by Christ this Christmas, than any Christmas before.