Merry everything, my friends!  If you were celebrating this weekend, I hope that you enjoyed a lovely, warm and cozy Christmas with your family – and maybe a white Christmas, if that sort of thing blows your hair back.  (We didn’t have one – the picture above is from a couple of weeks ago – but my parents did.  The kids were jealous when they showed us their snow via FaceTime!)

A Pre-Christmas Kennedy Center Treat

To give you the full picture of our Christmas, I have to rewind to Saturday.  Old friends may recall that last year, I took Peanut to see The Secret Garden at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in D.C.  We had such a fun time on our little mother-daughter outing that I decided to make it a tradition.  (Steve is jealous and has said he wants to get the whole family in on the theatre action when Nugget is old enough.  We’ll see.)  This fall I scouted around the performances at all of our major local theatres and there was a clear winner – Mr. Popper’s Penguins at the Kennedy Center!

Miss Peanut was all dolled up for her first trip to the Kennedy Center.  I made the mistake of playing Hamilton, disc one, in the car on the way to the show, and as we walked through the garage she announced: “Ohhhhhh, I am SO excited to see Hamilton!”  Oops.  A bag full of wooden ballerina figurines made for a welcome distraction.  (Hamilton is coming to the Kennedy Center in 2018, and now we are thinking that instead of making it a date night, we might need to bring our budding theatre geek along.)

Mr. Popper’s Penguins was in the Family Theatre, which I’d never seen before.  We wandered around looking for about ten minutes, then finally found our way to our seats.

Ready for an adventure in Stillwater!

There was a cute little playbill insert with facts about the show, penguins, and Antarctic exploration.

Peanut loved the show.  She was cracking up at the penguin puppets, laughing and applauding throughout the performance.  A definite hit!  After last year’s show was a bit beyond her, I was glad to see her have so much fun this year.  Now I’m more determined than ever to make a Christmas theatre production part of our family’s holiday traditions.

Christmas Eve with Friends

The fun continued on Sunday, with back-to-back social engagements.  A few weeks ago, Zan texted to ask if we’d like to get together for another football Sunday, either on Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve.  Since New Year’s Eve doesn’t work for us, schedule-wise, I responded that we’d love to see them on Christmas Eve.  Plans were laid for Zan to bring lunch (a generous gesture that I really appreciate!) and we would provide the TV, drinks and appetizers.  As we were finalizing our football plans, our day suddenly got noisier, cuter and more complicated when I realized that it would be my last opportunity to hang out with my law school BFF, Carly, before she and her family moved to Asia for two years for her husband’s job.  Carly and I quickly planned a morning playdate, and I was thinking that we’d be bidding them goodbye as we were welcoming Zan and Paul over.  But Zan mentioned wanting to see the waterskiing Santa down by the Old Town waterfront.  Since the waterskiing Santa was one of our favorite activities last Christmas, I immediately said we’d love to do that, and Carly liked the idea too.  A friend date mashup!

Carly and I took the kids to the playground first – she has a three-year-old girl and a one-year-old boy – and then met up with Zan, ate a quick lunch and headed down to the waterfront to catch Santa and friends cavorting on the river.

Just as we walked up to the river, the festivities began!  The Grinch on a jetski, elves in a skiff and Cindy Lou Who on a tube, and the main event – Santa and the reindeer on waterskis!

Our little pod was wildly impressed.

(Even Peanut enjoyed herself, although she was just as belligerent as ever when the camera came out.)  Eventually we rounded up our gaggle of children, negotiated meet and greet sessions with a polar bear, a panda, and Rudolph on our way off the dock, and went our separate ways.  I hugged Carly as hard as I could, to squeeze two years of hugs into this one goodbye.  And then Zan and I brought my own kids back for a cozy afternoon at home.

Eventually Zan and Paul headed off to church, and Steve and I tucked the kids in for an early bedtime.  When we were sure they were safely asleep (Peanut) or contained (Nugget) we got to work.  Errrrrr… I mean… Santa came!

I made sure to stay hydrated, which is very important.  After rewarding ourselves for a job well done, we turned in early, expecting a very early wakeup in the morning.

Christmas Morning

The early wakeup came at 6:00 when Peanut crawled into bed with us.  I was really worried that she would go downstairs and start ripping into the presents, but I needn’t have feared.  She was a good, patient girl, cuddling between us until 6:45 when her brother woke up.  He’s still little enough that he didn’t really understand what was going to be waiting downstairs on Christmas morning – but 6:45 is sleeping in for him.  He’s usually up between 5:30 and 6:00, but often earlier.  Sleeping until 6:45, even with his sister’s feet buried in my kidneys, was a nice Christmas gift.

Eventually we found our way downstairs and the kids tore into their stockings.  Santa was very good to them!  They got some necessities – sleeping bags for camping; some school uniform shirts and headbands, and rain boots, for Peanut; snowpants and snow boots for Nugget – but they also got a lot of fun stuff.  Peanut received a doll bed that is an exact miniature replica of her big girl bed; a mermaid tail blanket; a Melinda the Mermaid doll that was very hard to find; and a sweet fairy cottage with its inhabitants from her Grandma – among other things.  Nugget’s loot included a space shuttle adventure cape; a volcano play set with six little fabric dinosaurs and two palm trees; a ferry boat and submarine for the bath; and a beautiful wooden fire station play set from Grandma.

Mom and Dad did pretty well, too!  Steve got camping gear, books and his favorite socks, and I received three new attachments for my GoPro and a huge stack of books.  Santa made sure that everyone enjoyed all of their favorite things for Christmas!

If you celebrated this past weekend, I hope Santa was as good to you as he was to us!  Of course, the best gift is being home as a family, and surrounded by our friends.  Here’s to more happy memories in 2018!

Merry Christmas to all of my friends in the blogosphere!  How did you celebrate?