Christmas is coming.

And there is nothing you can do about it.
We, like everybody else in the free world, are taking it easy this holiday season. No trips, few gifts, and only taking the time off that work will take away if we don't.
Jackson is getting an expansion for his train set, and a few odds and ends, but nothing outrageous. Joseph would be happy with a ball of tinfoil, so we got him a ball of tinfoil. Kidding.
He's getting some lovely age-appropriate stuff. We promised to make a bigger deal about his birthday than Christmas, but it's hard with all the lights and whatnot.
Speaking of: Holy shit, Joseph is almost a year old! Time really flies. He's an awesome kid, so very like his brother in appearance, but unlike him in personality. Joseph is way more loud, and tends to destroy more than he creates. He is happy way more than he is sad. He is also huge. He can fit into 12 month stuff, and freely swaps clothes with his cousin Zane, who is 17 mo. He is in the 98th percentile for height, but 50th for weight, so he is not fat at all. He's just awesome:
My mom will be coming here for Christmas. She wanted us to go down there since we stayed here for Thanksgiving, but we chose not to do that, and here is why: Jennifer and Myself are both latch-key kids, meaning that holidays were more about travelling from this house to that in bad weather than anything else. As we got older and started dating, it just got worse, because then you had to go to all of those houses too. So I put my foot down. I did so much travelling throughout mu life for all of my relatives that now it is there turn. My kids will open their presents in their own house Christmas morning. If you want to be there, that's great. We'll work out Thanksgiving, but Christmas is ours.
So there.

-JP