It’s the most wonderful time of the year!  (That’s what the song says, at least.  I’m more of a summer kind of girl, myself.  But I do love the holiday season too.)  As always, I’ve been dragging the family out to make memories, determined to fill up our hearts and photo albums at every opportunity.  It’s what I do.  We’ve actually missed a few of our normal traditions – no Old Town parades, no Christmas in Little Washington, and we’re not going to be watching Santa waterski down the Potomac this year due to a schedule conflict.  But we’ve done a lot.

Visiting a Christmas Tree Farm

Starting with – cutting down our own Christmas tree!

Steve grew up with a real tree but I’ve had a faux tree for basically as long as I can remember.  I’ve always been squeamish about the idea of cutting down a living tree, but Christmas tree lots give me the sads.  But in 2017 I read that in order for a faux tree to be more environmentally friendly than a real tree, you have to keep it for seven years.  That’s the line at which the fake tree’s lifespan surpasses the effects of off-gassing, water use and chemical processing it takes to produce it.  The problem is: we weren’t keeping our fake trees that long.  These days it’s almost impossible to find a nice one that isn’t pre-strung with lights, and our pre-strung trees were dying after three to four years.  So I read up on Christmas tree farms, liked what I learned about their sustainability, and agreed to give it a try.  (We may go back to a fake tree in the future, but for now we’re experimenting with real.)  So – off to Middleburg, Virginia we went, to cut down our own Christmas tree!

The kids went tearing down the mowed path, ready to pick out their tree.

How about this one?  Too small, Charlie Brown.

Peanut liked this one, but it was a little oddly shaped, so Dad vetoed it.

Ohhhhh, the sass.  So much sass.

Found it!  Steve stopped in front of this Douglas fir and I said: “It’s a beaut, Clark!”  He cut it down while I stood supporting it from the other side, sniffling that I felt like a murderer.  I still feel a little guilty, actually.  But I try to remember that the tree gave oxygen to the atmosphere all year and that three to four replacements were planted in its place.

We hauled our victim tree out in the big yellow wagon.

While Steve took care of paying for the tree, getting it wrapped, and loading it on top of the old four-wheel drive sleigh (sorry, Clark) the kids and I warmed up by a delicious-smelling campfire.

I harassed the littles with photo shoots and checked out the coordinated outfits of the families who were clearly planning to combine their tree-cutting with Christmas photo-taking.

 

Such cuties.  Most adorable kids ever, and not a bit biased.

Finally, Daddy motioned us over to the car.  We drove home gingerly with the tree secured by several miles of rope.  Daddy set it up immediately and we wasted no time in pulling out the lights and ornaments.

Now it’s officially the holiday season!

Warming Up in the National Aquarium

Last Christmas, my high school BFF gifted our family with tickets to the National Aquarium in Baltimore.  It’s one of the most expensive family activities in the area – adult tickets are $40, incredibly steep when you consider that most museums are free – so having gift tickets was a blessing.  We applied the gift tickets to a membership so that we can go to the aquarium all year long; everyone in our family loves it.  It’s not Christmassy per se, but last weekend we found ourselves in Baltimore, darting through the raindrops to the aquarium entrance.

My favorite part of the aquarium?  Seeing the wide-eyed wonder on these two little faces.

(My second-favorite part is the gigantic multi-story coral reef.)

The puffins are cool too.

There was a touch tank full of moon jellies.  Nugget bravely reached a finger in and petted one of the jellyfish.  Peanut, Daddy and I took a hard pass.

Brave boy.

Hello, turtle.

So much fun!  I’m glad we have the membership, and I can’t wait to go back on chilly weekends this winter.

Christmas Trains at the U.S. Botanic Gardens

Finally, while we have missed out on most of our usual Advent fun this year (due to scheduling snafus, some poor planning on my part, and a yucky cold in Nugget’s nose a couple of weeks ago) I insisted that we make it to the Botanic Gardens for the Christmas trains.  That’s a can’t-miss activity.  It’s mainly for Nugget, but we all enjoy it.

While we waited in line, we enjoyed some of the plant-based D.C. landmarks.  The garden does them every year, and they never fail to impress.  The Washington Monument!

Waiting impatiently to enter the train room…

It was delightful as always!  My favorite year was 2016 – for the National Park System’s centennial, the train room was NPS-themed.  This year, the trains circulated around various train stations, natural elements and the North Pole, but it was still beautiful.

A certain little boy was very taken with the whole thing.

(His sister was impressed, too.)  Hello, Thomas!

After we’d had our fill of the trains, we checked out the rest of the Botanic Gardens.  I demanded pictures by the poinsettia wall.

 

(It was nice to have these pictures to look at later, after they were both so obnoxious in Michael’s that I wanted to kick them out of the car.)

The final stop on the way out of the Botanic Gardens is the D.C. landmarks – of course.

Hello, Mr. President!

I had to snap a picture of the Supreme Court for us lawyers in the family.

The National Museum of African-American History and Culture.  (Still on my to-do list.)

A miniature Botanic Gardens.  The roof looks like it’s made of onion skin?

The Library of Congress.  Hello, beautiful!

And the Capitol – always the most impressive of all.

The days are ticking closer and closer to Christmas now, and I still have a lot to do.  I’m entering the whirlwind of gift-wrapping, card-writing, FedEx-running and friend-lunching that always characterizes the latter part of December.  But I don’t mind any of it, and I hope that my kids grow up remembering how I packed the holiday season full of fun and family from October to January.

How have you been celebrating this holiday season?