Leif Garretson - First Christmas Eve - 1975

This darling little boy had no idea what Christmas was all about that evening at dinner. He was so cute! But he sure had a good time.

This photo was taken at the dining room table at the old stone house at 804 Moro Street in Manhattan, Kansas. We bought that house when we moved there in September 1973. It was a hundred-year-old wreck inside. We spent the three years we lived there working on it to make it livable again, and little did Leif know that when he was 17, after living in Virginia, Germany, Japan, Hawaii, Chicago and Puerto Rico, he would come back here and help us fix it up yet again!

Christmas was always a special time for us, and often we were far away from other family, so we made it cozy and warm. Peter W. especially is "the man who loves Christmas" and decorated the tree with enthusiasm.

Seems a bit odd to be posting a Christmas photo in June, but I wanted to go back to some continuity of Leif's childhood and finish up 1975. I have one more photo from that year, but now I wonder where is the picture of Leif crawling through the huge piles of oak leaves in October, or of him in his high chair by the picnic table, trying to eat an ice cream cone and getting it all over himself? I need to find those!