And the stockings were hung

For the last several years, I have searched for the perfect Christmas stockings for our family to replace the motley assortment we've been using.  Our current collection includes some from my childhood, which are of course awesome, but then also a few that I sewed (badly), a few from Target that I embellished (badly), and at least one that I am pretty sure is an old sock of my dad's.  Every Christmas season, I spend hours trolling websites and sometimes even in-person shopping for the perfect stockings but I've never found them. Or so I thought.

Today, I realized with a start that Max doesn't have any stocking at all.  I went to order him one quickly online, and I miraculously found the perfect stockings, and ordered not just one for Max, but five lovely, matching, monogrammed stockings for our whole family.

Why was it so easy this year?  Had I really just not found the right stockings in all my searching in the past?  That's what I thought but I was wrong.  I realized that I found the stockings because this year we have Max.  I could never pull the trigger in past years because I must have known on some level that whatever set of 4 I got would be wrong. Because this family was going to need 5 stockings to hang by the chimney with care.  So only this year was I ready to make this all-important purchase.

So thanks, Maxy, for making our family complete.  And for helping me finally cross that item off my to-do list after many many years!!  You'll get an extra treat in your stocking for that.

Elf baby, Christmas 2014

Pre and Post

Dash has looked forward to getting his face painted like the Grinch at the Santa Train for months. He does make a pretty cute, and very un-Grinchy, Grinch.

Big boy in a cart

First time for Max in a shopping cart! He predictably charmed everyone in the store.