Fa La-La-La-La

With only 14 more days until Christmas we are just getting started on our holiday festivities. Last week we all went up to DC for a session at the temple. Unless we go up with another family, Reed and I take the kids with us up to DC and just trade off doing a session and staying with the kids. We always get Cafe Rio and usually hang out at the visitors center while we are waiting for the sessions to get over. The grounds were beautifully decorated with lights.

Inside the visitors center they had an impressive display of Christmas trees and  nativity scenes from around the world. The boys took turns trying to spot baby Jesus in each one.

Here we are in front of the temple. I did the 6 o'clock session and Reed did the 8 o'clock. We were there pretty late, but I was glad we ended up going at night o we could see all of the lights. The kids were so excited about all of the lights and decorations and being at the temple that they actually behaved very well, despite the late hour.

Almost as good as temple square in Salt Lake :)

Kason had just learned a little poem or song about the nativity at school so it was fun for him to recognize all of the different parts and people. He especially likes the "special star" part

For family night last week we went to a train show held a little church in Virginia Beach. The Hampton Roads Model Train Engineer club puts up a huge (and very detailed) display of model trains every Christmas.

Of course Harley managed to derail one of the trains within minutes of walking in the door,  but the rest of the visit was relatively uneventful and quite enjoyable.

Harley was very drawn to this bear that was standing at the entrance. It was connected to a microphone that someone sitting behind a table talked into. There was a speaker in the bear so he would moved his mouth and it looked like he was saying whatever the guy behind the table was saying into the microphone. Harley didn't know about the guy behind the table and thought the bear was actually having a conversation with him. As you can see in the picture he was both fascinated and terrified.

Harley would have nothing to do with Santa Clause, even when he found out that Santa had candy canes, which is unusual for Harley since he can usually be motivated to do anything for candy. Ella wasn't going to sit on this guys lap either.

But Kason was brave and told Santa that he wanted a helicopter for Christmas. Although, as he told us later, Santa did make him a little nervous.

Tonight for family night we went to Kelly's nursery and picked out a beautiful Christmas tree. The people there were very nice and since they were all sold out of their smaller less expensive trees they gave us 10 dollars off any tree we picked!

Here is the winner! It is so hard to get a good picture of all of us. Grampy is out of town and since we were in her neck of the woods, we met Grammy at the nursery and she joined us for family night. 

All wrapped up and strapped to the car.

Then we got it inside and started the much anticipated chore of decorating.

It was magical!

All of the kids really got into it for the first little while and we had a lot of fun listening to Christmas music and making the tree beautiful.

Here is the finished product. They candy canes went on last and were definitely the Piste Resistance.  I have a feeling they will be the source of a lot of conflict over the next couple of weeks as Harley lives for candy. But we will see. 'Tis the season to be jolly!