I asked my nephew what kind of hat he wanted for Christmas, and he said an alligator. I thought that might be a bit too difficult, so I asked if there was maybe another animal he might like and he said he liked lions. I thought that sounded a bit easier! I didn’t see any patterns I particularly liked online, so I decided to wing it.

This was his face when I told him to be fierce like a lion. I love it! 4 year old kids are so much fun.

I did make it a bit too large, but hopefully this way it’ll fit him for a few years and for this winter he can just flip the brim up.

 I learned how to do the crocheted loop stitch when I made the Cabbage Patch Hat a few months ago, and I used that to make the curly mane, I was pretty happy with the way it turned out, and if I hadn’t run out of yarn I might have done the whole back of the head that way.

I also just realized I didn’t get hardly any pictures of Christmas!? Whoopsie. We had a great 8 day trip to Tacoma and got to hang out with my siblings and cousins, it was wonderful letting the nieces and nephews hang out together, staying up way past their bedtimes, but Sam did great and slept great the whole trip!

Erika got this great one of Sam and Paul playing with some of their Christmas toys.

I’m a bit relieved to be back to our regular schedule though, I always get a big urge to clean and purge at the beginning of the year and this year was no exception (There might be some nesting happening too, less than a week before I hit my third trimester!) and between yesterday and today we got the garage cleaned out, the kitchen reorganized, the bedroom completely cleaned top to bottom and ALL the laundry washed and folded and put away from our trip, AND all of our Christmas decorations are down, boxed and put away! (Except for some twinkle lights, because when the sun sets at 4:00pm, you just need a bit more light in your life) And I was hoping with this purging and organizing it’d help with my New Years Resolution (to simplify- more posts on that to come) but for now it feels wonderful to sit and knit in a very clean house!