Winterfest

We've had a great time doing our small activity each day on our countdown until Christmas. The Christmas Letter is all written (by me) and designed (by Jacob), I just need to go pick up the right paper so we can get it all printed and sent off. We read some favorite Christmas stories...which, honestly, we do several times every day, but it's still fun to put on our advent list. It's especially fun when Jacob and I stay up after Sawyer and read some of ours (short stories instead of picture books ;) by the Christmas tree. We had a wonderful time listening to the street carolers at Figgy Pudding. We had a bite to eat and made it to the mainstage in time for the final performances. They even had a special performance by the Seahawks Drumline, which was super fun. Santa even made an appearance in tap shoes, along with all his reindeer, and Sawyer's jaw pretty much dropped. It was so fun to see his face light up. I think his favorite part, however, was wearing mittens along with babylegs (legwarmers) on his feet all night (I forgot both the backpack and his shoes (pregnancy brain? yikes!) We used the stroller and Daddy's shoulders instead of the backpack, and the mittens on the feet couldn't have been too embarassing, since we bundled his lower half up with a blanket anyhow). Actually, his favorite part was the big, huge, lit up Macy's star. He just kept staring up at it, saying "star, star" and he is still talking about it.

Last night, we went to the Seattle Center's Winterfest. It was also as good as ever. Sawyer took a ride on the carousel. (Actually, he took two rides since photographing him in the dark and on a moving object that progressively got faster and faster made for some blurry photos the first round. I figured out my strategy a little bit better the second time ;) We also saw the ice-sculpture that had been created earlier in the day, and stood around a bonfire listening and singing along to some carols. The highlight of the evening, of course, was the Train & Village. I took a bunch of pictures of all of the details of the village but didn't want to picture overload our blog. If you live in the area and want to check it out, it's more than worth it. Kids can even take a turn "conducting" one of the two engines circling about the village. We watched the trains for a good twenty minutes and then made our way home.

Tonight, we missed the broadcast at our church. It was just one of those days. Jacob had been at church a good 8-9 hours and once we finally got settled and at dinner we just didn't feel like getting dressed again and going out. So, instead, we had some peppermint ice-cream and watched "Mr. Krueger's Christmas".

This has been a really busy week for us (Jacob is super busy at work and I've been super busy - 5 photo shoots this week to wrap things up and now a bunch of editing and print orders to fill and deliver before the 15th! then, I will get a break!). It has been nice to look forward to at least a little something special and a break from routine each day. We are looking forward to next week's activities!