The Zoo and Christmas

So a tradition in my family growing up was to pile into the minivan and go through a couple of neighborhoods looking at Christmas Lights. We just spent our third Christmas in the Mid-Atlantic and it is official, Ebenezer Scrooge lives here. People think that they are festive if they put a string of lights across a window, and even then they don't do it until the week of Christmas. In other words, there aren't any neighborhoods to drive through to look at lights. (I think this is easily explained by the fact that people do not want people driving by their house, because when people "drive by" out here it usually involves handguns.) ***Update!!! So Beki just went online to see if she could find other Christmas Light displays, and she found some, but they are all $15-$20 per car. Scrooge...I'm serious.***


The Temple puts up a light display similar to what happens in Salt Lake, and we thought about going there again this year like we have the last two, but then we heard about "Zoolights" at the National Zoo. It sounded like fun, and it would involve a train trip downtown, which to the boy is the highlight of the trip. So we bundled up and went off on our way.

We didn't tell Owen where we were going, but he figured it out pretty quick. And it wasn't the animals that gave it away, apparently he knows that "Z-o-o" spells zoo.

On the advertisements that we had seen for the Zoolights, they talked a lot about their train exhibit, so first things first, we went to see the trains, and this is what we found:

Just above the green engine there is a little ladybug train car...Owen was excited to have finally found the ladybug train.

Now, I'm not saying that it wasn't neat, but we had been to see the trains at the Botanical Gardens where they steamed through, in and around natural wonders of the world. Compared to that, this was pretty lame. Even the boy thought so, because after a few minutes he was done and ready to go. When we got outside Owen saw something really neat on the ground that he needed to stand in...

They had these neat light things everywhere, in all sorts of shapes and sizes. I decided that I need one next year so that I can project snowflakes onto my roof!

For the rest of the evening we wandered around the zoo (a few of the exhibits were open, but most of the animals were sleeping anyway. The smell however, does not sleep.) and looked at all of the light displays.

The animal designs were pretty neat, they are all done with regular C5 led lights, and from what I could see, all on a single continuous string.

Think your job is bad? Try being the guy inside the Panda Suit dancing inside an inflatable snowglobe...good times for that guy. 

It is hard to take pictures in the dark, but this one did kind of capture the blueness of this tree and arch display.

This is why we never have family pictures of us...the boy is a spaz!

But he is really cute... a little cold, but cute.

Most of the exhibits were animals, but they also had some that moved, and then some that had the music that went with them. We were watching one, and I was recording it with the camera just in case something like this happened. It looks just like a normal lame display, but about 25 seconds in the boy strikes up a power stance and starts shaking his booty!

Then of course Christmas came. While most of you I am sure had children up at the wee hours of the morning, Owen woke up at around 8:45am. What is our secret you ask? Simple, we were out delivering goodies and visiting friends until 9 or 10pm on Christmas Eve. By the time we got the boy home and into bed it was pretty late. Now think about it, "Santa" is going to be about his work until 1 or 2 in the morning anyway, at least this way the morning came a little bit later! Ok, rapid fire picture time!!!!

Santa left Owen IronMan and a Hotwheels car in his stocking!

This stickhorse (which was immediately name Spiderman, along with the other identical horse which was named Batman) are from Grandma Nettie, and get ridden around the house frequently.

Owen was going to have Spiderman the Horse eat the apples that he left out for the Reindeer, when he noticed that the Reindeer had eaten them!! (Had he inspected he may have found that the Reindeer prefer their apples with peanut butter...if you have never tried this, you should!!)

Technology is amazing. Beki's family got to watch Owen open all of his gifts via Skype

He got some reptile hand puppets from his friend Lizzie

His very own mug with his name on it! (It was immediately filled with water, which made mommy and papa nervous for the remainder of the morning.)

Grandpa and Abuela got Owen some Car PJ's that look huge, but I am sure he will outgrow in 2 months!

10 minutes before the mall closed, Papa finally found what he had been searching for weeks for...

Speedy Spencer...

I don't know if you remember, but dashing off to his room is exactly what he did last year when he got Hiro, I barely caught his elbow in this picture, he is getting faster!

Spencer needed to be played with immediately!

Tia Tina got his Rosie...

And off he went again!!

Both trains needed cars to pull!

Thank you Grandma Nettie for making sure that Papa never makes it through story time dry eyed again...

Owen has become fascinated with Legos, and especially loved the lego mat to build on

Owen's best friend Dean got him a stuffed snowman that plays Christmas Carols. After watching Toy Story3 - which the boy also received - I can not look at stuffed animals and not think that they aren't evil.

Speaking of Toy Story3, this present showed up on our doorstep two weeks before Christmas from my Father and Carolee. Owen loves packages in the mail, so he picked the box up, and immediately Buzz started making all sorts of noise. Owen freaked out because there was a Buzz Lightyear in the box, and he needed it! Luckily the box was addressed to me, and Owen has a well developed respect for mail belonging to who it was addressed to. He tried to convince me to let him play with it, but I told him that it was mine, and I stick it in my closet. He forgot all about it...

But loves the fact that it moves on its own!!

Beki and I got presents too:

This is not all of her gifts, but the Apron is pretty neat. Underneath the apron, if I may be so bold to say, is her favorite gift of the year from the boy and myself - an electric blanket. No more being cold!!!!

Backstory Time!!! So we have a little fireplace, and in the wintertime I like to have a nice roaring fire. Sometimes when the fire dies down I will blow on it to get it going again, and by going again, I mean I get the fire ridiculously hot so that it starts to burn your eyebrows off and you could probably smelt steel in there. (I'm a Tuba player, we have a lot of hot air.) Beki and I have always joked about how if I got a bellows I could be a real blacksmith...

Yup...she found me bellows, I am still giggling about this.

So apparently I have a bit of a gum chewing addiction...

Because everyone got me gum...

I received 30 packs of Trident Cinnamon gum...that is 540 pieces!! That should last me until February I guess...

Once all of the gifts were opened I started cooking. We had some family friends who were not going anywhere for the holiday, and we figured that since we didn't have family to make the day crazy, we would all get together and let our kids go nuts and stuff ourselves with delicious food. Since I was that one cooking (and we had ham, garlic mashed potatoes, Italian Sausage with Onions and Peppers over Rice, Corn, Salad, Potato Salad, Crab Spread, Spinach Dip, Red Velvet cake and more candy than our kids could eat) we don't really have any pictures of the crazyness, until the very end of the night, when a toddler toy, a feather and my wife turned out to be the greatest toy the children had ever played with.

They took turns for probably a half an hour putting that leaf in the air-stream and catching it.

We hope that you all had a great Christmas, and that you are gearing up for a good New Year's as well!!

p.s. In case you want to experience Christmas Morning with Owen, here it is...