It still felt like a dream. Even if you'd been with Art for years, even if you were on your second kid, getting to decorate your home for the holidays brought you an unbridled amount of joy.

Maybe it seemed stupid to other people. You didn't care. You were the one having all the fun. In fact, you found Art's holiday spirit rubbing off on you, from the first season you spent together.

You may have been as whipped as he'd been the whole time when he played your first game of "find the mistletoe". And giving it a name may be generous. Calling it a game may be as well. So what if he spends fifteen minutes finding the perfect place to hang the little bundle so that he can surprise you with a kiss as soon as you finally unknowingly walk under it. You thought it was cute.

And he still hadn't stopped. Even though the two of you were going on another year of getting a long, drawn out "ewwww" from your daughter when you finally walked under it and received your kiss. "She'll get it someday", he'd started to mumble.

So you couldn't help but feel pleased with yourself as you stood, leaned into his side as you both faced the tree, trimmed to the nines. Both kids down for the night, there was nothing to do but admire the cozy, warm life you'd built together.

You still had a bit of a way to go, but popcorn and cranberries only keep for so long, you'd reminded Art. And the baby, perhaps, shouldn't be given a needle to join in on the craft.

That didn't mean your kids were excluded, though. If you hadn't, Art would've made sure that each and every even loosely holiday drawing they did was on full display during the season. Paper craft ornaments hung from the tree alongside his grandma's vintage, hand-blown glass.

Holidays with Art were all about sentimentality. And if you said it didn't improve the entire month, you would be lying to yourself.

Snapping you out of the dreamy kind of feeling you were getting, he bumped your hip with his own. "What do you think of the tree this year? I think we could've gone taller."