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Christmas in the Country

After spending the few days leading up to Christmas in Washington, DC, we were ready to head out of town for an old-fashioned country Christmas.  We changed into jeans, switched from cognac to beer and started saying "ya'll" a lot.  Well, ok, we were already wearing jeans and we didn't actually say y'all out loud, but my parents did convince my son to pronounce "tired" as "tard".  And he has been saying it that way ever since (thanks sooooooooooo much guys).

Anyhow, we headed to my parents house which is near Lexington, Virginia, deep in the heart of the Shennandoah valley. If you want to see what their lovely farm looks like when it is sunny and warm you will have to look elsewhere because it was most assuredly not sunny and warm this Christmas.  I acknowledge that after living in Phoenix for 10 years I am officially a wimp, but really people, it was so cold and windy it made my eyeballs hurt.  My eyeballs did not enjoy that.

We did discover one "country Christmas" fact, though, that I'm sure ya'll in the country have known for a long time.  Farm with rolling hills + snow = instant sledding opportunity.  As you may recall from numerous prior entries on this blog, my parents would never condone any sporty activity that even remotely looked like a real sport, so normal sledding was out of the question.  Instead, they suggested boogie boarding down one of the hills on their farm.  Here is my daughter demonstrating.

Yes, it looks a little like sledding but since boogie boards are made of light styrofoam and are designed for body surfing in waves, there were some unintended consequences.  One was that it was difficult to get going, which required either a lot of pushing off, or for mom (that would be me) to to run in front of the sled pulling that leash.  I'm confident that I didn't look at all ridiculous doing that.  Here was an example of the pushing off.

Going nowhere fast.

 
Another consequence was that since the boogie boards weren't very slippery, they'd tend to come to an abrupt halt upon hitting anything that wasn't snow, like one too many patches of grass, resulting in a variety of wipeouts ranging from the mundate to the spectacular.  They could have used some of that non-nutritive cereal varnish.  [Can you name that movie?]

My nephew, Austin, definitely embraces the family tradition of hybrid made up sports.  Allow me to present boogie board snow skiing:

Look out for that blade of grass!

My sister did bring along an official sled, so there was some honest-to-goodness sledding that occurred as well. 

Just don't tell the grandparents about that last part.

 

 

Christmas in the City

As we do most years, in a sort of deranged reverse migration, we left sunny warm Arizona to locate a proper winter-weather Christmas.  Our destination this year:  Washington DC.

As we stepped out of the airport, I reveled in those first few moments of gloriously cold, Christmasy weather.  I thought "ahhhhh, this is what Christmas should feel like."  Then, when the first icy blast of wind struck approximately 26 seconds later, I realized we had made a terrible, terrible mistake.  I tried to get the family to proceed calmly back into the terminal and get on the next plane returning to Phoenix but they just wouldn't see reason.  There was nothing for it but to bundle up and carry on bravely with the original plan. 

I'm glad we did.  First we got to see our good friends, Paul and Lisa and their kids. We have never skipped a beat with Paul and Lisa even after years of not seeing each other, so I wasn't surprised that the kids hit it off too.  Within 30 seconds of meeting, our kids disappeared into the house with their kids and other than mealtimes and school hours we didn't see them again for 2 days. 

We also had a great time traipsing around DC.   There were no lines to speak of and it was very educational for the children.  For example, we saw money being printed at the Beaureau of Printing and Engraving.  [Can you believe they wouldn't let me take any pictures inside even though I pinky swore that I wouldn't use them to counterfeit and even though I went to lawschool with President Obama?  Where has the trust gone, people?]

We learned important facts about our nation's currency such as the amount the kids would be worth in stacked $100 bills.

We learned the stark financial truth that the Bureau will only accept genuine cold, hard cash when it sells you an imitation quarter.

We learned that hoodies actually have uses other than as fashion accessories.

That the Washington Monument staff can pack approximately 87 people into a small elevator.  But, it was still better than walking all the way up there:

That it is the best view in town and those of us who failed to ever go up there when we lived in DC were really missing out:

My fellow alum's house:

That Lincoln is still really big and really cool -- both the statue and the man.

And that the Vietnam Memorial can still cause you to choke up even after seeing it about 15 times.

So, it was worth braving the cold to spend the first part of our Christmas vacation in DC.  Stay tuned to hear what happened as the temperature continued to drop and we struck out for the countryside . . .