We spent the holiday in Florida with Bob’s family, but before we left, we had our annual Christmas Party. This was our third year hosting it. (The first year we had only been moved in to our house for a couple weeks and our upstairs bathroom was completely gutted except for the newly-installed toilet.) But, it’s always such a good time. Our recurring theme: “Ugly” Christmas Sweaters.My brother, Sam and sister, Ellen.
Me and Bob’s brother, Brian. TWINSIES!!
Some people went rogue and wore footie PJ’s.The newly married Mr. and Mrs. Leggett!
Some people were lame and wore regular clothes :-)!
The future Mr. and Mrs. Bergdoll
Another tradition at our party is the white elephant booze exchange. Unfortunately, I did not end up with this humongous bottle of wine, BUT…my sister did!
We also play another game. Last year it was Minute-to-win-it Christmas games. This year it was Christmas Pictionary. Bob was the “game administrator”.Some more pictures from the night:
Clark spent the night at my parents’ house, but we got our baby fix from these cuties:
The night ended with a dance party in the basement. It was such a fun night! We already can’t wait until next year!!
In other Christmas news, this little guy was the star on our Christmas Cards this year. So much cuter than Rudolph, don’t you think?He didn’t look so cute/happy when he met Santa. Apparently, bearded, jolly, fat men are not his thing:He cried so much, he made Santa upset!Thanks a lot, Clark. I lost a bet with the photographer for this!
Christmas in Florida meant Clark’s first time on the beach:He loved it! He also loved trying to eat the sand. I guess that was to be expected…
Overall, we had an incredible Christmas season. We couldn’t have asked for a better first Christmas with Clark!
We threw our annual Christmas party this weekend and it was so much fun! But before I get to that, let’s go back to lastweekend.
A couple weeks ago, Bob called me from work and said,
Don’t make any plans for the weekend of Dec. 1.
When I asked him why, he said,
I have a whole surprise weekend planned for you.
Every day until the surprise weekend, he tried to throw me off course. A few of the fake hints he gave me were:
We are flying there
He signed me up for a 10K (anyone who knows me, knows that that would NOT have been a good surprise)
Aruba
By the time I was supposed to be ready on Friday, I was thoroughly confused. On his way home from work, Bob stopped to get us dinner at Corner Bakery and after scarfing it down, we loaded the car and left.
I assumed we were driving to our destination, but that wasn’t the case. I was SO excited when we arrived at the train station!
We were headed to…DC! Other than the final destination, I was still in the dark.
We arrived at Union Station (which is beautifully decorated this time of year) and walked just a few blocks to our hotel. This kid was so excited that he didn’t fall asleep until 11pm!!! (I have to admit, I was just as excited to find out what else Bob had planned for me/us!)
Saturday morning, we all woke up Clark woke us up around 7:00am. That was okay, because Bob said we needed to leave pretty early for my next surprise.
After my massage, I used the steam room, showered, and pocketed some of their complimentary toiletries until Bob and Clark made their way back to pick me up.
Then we headed to the spy museum just a few blocks away. Unfortunately I didn’t get any good pictures there because technically they are not allowed. It was really cool but Clark was tired, hungry, and cranky so we ended up breezing through most of the place. We will have to go back when he is old enough to enjoy it also!
By this time, Bob and I were pretty hungry ourselves so we went to Matchbox Pizza in Chinatown for a late lunch. SO YUMMY!!!
We were all getting pretty tired, so after a quick stop into Urban Outfitters to take some silly pictures, we walked back to the hotel to squeeze in a nap before my night-time surprise.We had to take the Metro to get there: another first for Clark.At this point, I had NO IDEA where we were going. Since we had a late lunch, I didn’t think we were going to dinner, but Bob seemed to be in a hurry so I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t expecting this:
From the end of November till the end of December, the National Zoo puts up more than 500,000 lights of animal silhouettes and musical light displays. It’s so pretty and…FREE!!! They even have these warming stations throughout with refreshments you can buy like cookies and hot cocoa, or coffee with Bailey’s for the adults!
It was pretty cold this evening so I used our Moby wrap to keep Clark warm (and I think it kept me warmer too!)Here’s a video we took of one of the animated musical displays:
This was probably my most favorite part of the weekend. Just because it was something different and we could do it as a family.
But the weekend wasn’t even over yet!! In fact, after ZooLights, we hopped on the Metro and headed to Bethesda to meet my little sister for drinks and apps after she got off work. I’m glad she got to be part of my weekend. It’s been so fun having her live so close. Clark was so tired by this point, though, so this was the best picture I got.He looks like he’s smiling, but in reality, he was probably screaming in this picture. Good thing it was pretty loud in the restaurant and we sat next to a couple who had kids, so they were totally understanding! Sorry we kept you out so late, Clarky!!
Sunday morning, we meant to get up for early service, but it started at 9:00am and we all slept in until 8:45am. Bob looked up another service for us to go to and we headed to the 11:00am at Capitol Hill Presbyterian.
After, we walked around for a bit. It was pretty cool because the weather was gorgeous and hardly anyone was outside. I was in desperate need of some coffee, so we found a Starbucks, and then Bob said we had plans for lunch. He took me back to Union Station, so I asked if we were taking the metro again or something. He said no, and started looking around the train station. Apparently, he couldn’t find the restaurant. I have to admit that at this point I was pretty hungry so I started complaining a bit. As we passed by a Ben and Jerry’s, I even said
Bob, I would take ice cream!! I’m soooo hungry!
He refused and we finally found B. Smith’s! And…SURPRISE AGAIN!!! There were 4 of my friends waiting there to eat with us! (And way more of them to come!) We had an incredible all you can eat buffet of breakfast and lunch foods AND bottomless mimosas.Because there were so many of us, they gave us our own room. It turned into a 3 hour lunch!! Clark of course was the center of attention and absolutely loved it!
After lunch, Bob said our train didn’t head back to Baltimore until 7:00pm so we had some time to kill and thought we would check out the monuments. Unfortunately it started to rain a little so we decided to change our tickets to the earlier train.
It was only sprinkling on our walk to Union Station, but I didn’t want Clark to get wet/sick so I covered the stroller with a blanket. Apparently, he didn’t like that he couldn’t see (or maybe that people couldn’t see him).He’s so funny!
Overall, it was such an awesome weekend and I feel so lucky to have these two boys in cahoots with each other to give me such precious memories!
Clark cracks me up some times. Today, he was having trouble deciding what he wanted to do, what he wanted to play with, and how he wanted to get from one place to the next. So he just started crawling/walking in laps around the living room. Check out this cutie!
The video quality isn’t great because I took it on my new Iphone (by “new” I mean my sister’s used Iphone4, but I’m so excited about it)!!Can you believe how well he’s walking? He’s funny about that too. He tries to walk everywhere!! When did my baby get so big! AHH!
My brother, Sam and sister, Ellen.
Me and Bob’s brother, Brian. TWINSIES!!
The newly married Mr. and Mrs. Leggett!
Unfortunately, I did not end up with this humongous bottle of wine, BUT…my sister did!
Some more pictures from the night:
He didn’t look so cute/happy when he met Santa. Apparently, bearded, jolly, fat men are not his thing:
He cried so much, he made Santa upset!
Thanks a lot, Clark. I lost a bet with the photographer for this!
He loved it! He also loved trying to eat the sand. I guess that was to be expected…
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