Holiday Fun

With the Holidays here we thought we should take a little time off from work and studying to do some fun Christmas things.  It was easy enough to convince Nate to emerge from his studying cave, but Bryn was simply too busy with e-mails to leave right away.

 

After we convinced her to take some time off we went down to Lowe's to pick out some of Nate's birthday presents.  Apparently, he only wanted to remodel our 70's era bathrooms for his birthday.  I don't know though.  The aqua green toilet and shower are kind of growing on me....

Next up, we went downtown to catch Santa clause at the Christmas village that is set up each year on the White House lawn.  As you can see Bryn was really excited to see the big guy.

But alas we were unable to see the Claus.  We came the day after the National Tree Lighting Ceremony and they hadn't yet taken down the stage.  We were told Santa would be in later on in the week and to come back.  After reading on some of our friends' and family's blogs about the ridiculous prices charged to sit on the fat guy's lap, we really recognize how nice it is to live in a city where everything, including Santa Claus, is subsidized by the government...  

Too bad they don't spring for a more elaborate tree.  I mean come on, this one looks like they glued a bunch of ornaments to a fishing net and just plopped it over the top of the tree.

  

In lieu of seeing Big Red that day we opted to approach the Elder Squirrel and beg for presents.  Seriously though, this was the coolest rodent I've ever seen. 

When we got home we decided to let Brynlee hang her new ornament on the tree.  We've decided that among our other holiday traditions, we want our kids to each pick out an ornament every year.  

(That way when they move on with their lives they will have a box of ornaments to put on their own tree.)  We thought it'd be a fun tradition for them, especially when little Brynlee has to deal with hanging a Barbie on her tree when she becomes "too cool" for that "kid stuff."  Kinda like her dad's high school pictures.  You know, the ones where he slept in a bucket of peroxide.

We've taken to allowing Miss Bryn to pick what she wants to buy, that way if she doesn't like it later on we will be blame free.  First we let her choose her stocking way back before Thanksgiving.  We picked out 4 of the nicer stockings at Wal-Mart and held them up.  Each time we did she picked the green reindeer one.  This week we went to Crate and Barrel and picked out 5 or 6 ornaments.  Once again, she picked one and stuck with it.  This year it was a sledding snowman.

After our inaugural tree ornament ceremony Bryn decided it was time to go see Grandma.  She climbed into the box and said "send me away!"

It was all fun and games until we actually threatened to box her up.  Either way we only have a few days left until we see everyone for Christmas!  We're extremely excited to be heading back to snowy Utah for the holidays.  Nate is just glad he'll be able to shave his beard off and not have to crack a book again for 3 weeks.