Merry Christmas!

Last week before the kids arrived, I went back to the Washington National Cathedral to see the Annual Crèche Exhibit. The Cathedral has over 500 crèches in their collection and have about 50 of them on display this year. This one made of painted gourds from Peru is one of my favorites. You can see all of them here.

Merry Christmas!

All Together for Christmas

 Last Friday, Marcus and Kristina flew in from Florida. Remember the funny Thanksgiving sweaters? Well, Marcus greeted us at the airport with the Christmas sweater that he made. Tonight, JC and Marie are flying in from California and we're really excited to be spending Christmas all together. I have lots of sight-seeing activities planned. When they all leave next week, they're going to be exhausted.

Windows to Wonderland

There were so many places I wanted to get to this month to see the holiday decorations and exhibits. A couple of weekends ago Rich and I went to the US Botanic Garden to see the Windows to Wonderland holiday exhibit.  The garden railway and miniature historic buildings on display were designed by Paul Busse and his company, Applied Imagination. The detail is amazing.

Everything is made from natural plant materials. It's a lot of fun walking through the exhibit and trying to figure out what things are made of. There are the usual things you would think of: twigs, bark, leaves, seeds, nuts, vines and moss. But then, there are some things a little more unusual like the gourd that is used for the dome of the Jefferson Memorial. I haven't figured out what is used for the glass windows of the US Botanic Garden Conservatory.

To design a building, Mr. Busse first studies architectural drawings and photographs. He then creates a base structure out of acrylic foam boards. Then all the details are added using dried plant materials. How long a building takes depends on the complexity. The US Capitol took over 600 hours to create. There were nine replicas of buildings that are located on The Mall.

In the East Gallery is "Wonderland" - several villages and trains running everywhere. I've only put up a few pics on this post, but you can see all of the photos in a web album here.

Union Station

I'm going to keep this short. A while back I took an outdoor tour of the buildings that make up Capitol Hill. I hadn't gotten any pictures of Union Station, so here are a few now:

Besides being the largest train station in the world when it was built, I think it must have been the most beautiful also.

Even More Pumpkins

I've completed another nine pumpkins. I really love doing these. They go really fast and have been a lot of fun. I now have 36 out of 48 done.

One To Go!

I finished block number eleven of my Thru Grandmother's Window quilt. It's a little wild, isn't it? One more block to go!

Merry Tubachristmas!

The night after A Ragtime Christmas there was another Millennium Stage performance that I thought would be fun. It was called Merry Tubachristmas. I had never heard of Tubachristmas before, but it's an annual event that takes place in cities all across the country. Traditional christmas music has been arranged just for tubas and euphoniums. Anyone who plays one of these instruments can participate.

At the concert that I went to there were over 300 participants! That's a lot of low brass and the sound really filled the hallway. They played a couple of dozen pieces and encouraged the audience to sing along.

Here's a link to all of the archived Tubachristmas performances at the Kennedy Center if you'd like to have a listen.

A Ragtime Christmas

The Millennium Stage at the Kennedy Center has a free performance every day of the year at 6pm eastern time as part of the Performing Arts For Everyone program. Can't make it? You can watch them live on the web! Missed one you wanted to see? All the performances are archived!

A couple of Sundays ago I went to see A Ragtime Christmas performed by Bill Edwards. He was wonderful! He played several ragtime selections and in between told us a little of the history of ragtime. You know, it's really hard to listen to ragtime for an hour and not leave feeling happy.

Scottish Christmas Walk

I think I've mentioned that I love parades. The morning after the Christmas Charity Concert we went to the 38th Annual Scottish Christmas Walk Parade in Alexandria, VA. I don't think I've ever seen so much plaid in my life! There were over 100 Scottish Clans, pipe and drum bands, Scottish dancers, re-enactment groups, and Scottie dog groups. It was a pretty chilly morning, but it was worth it. Here are a few pics:

Basilica Christmas Concert

The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception held their annual Christmas Charity Concert on December 5th. (You can see that I'm still desperately trying to catch up on my blog posts.) I hadn't yet been to the Basilica. It is the largest Roman Catholic church in all of North America. Since we got there just before the concert started, I wasn't really able to walk around and look at everything, so I'll be going back for a tour sometime after the holidays.

The music was so beautiful. The concert featured the Choir of the Basilica and The Catholic University of America Chorus and Symphony Orchestra. We weren't sitting where we could see very well, but at a concert it's more important to be able to hear than to see, right? And, we were lucky to have a place to sit as there were many standing along the sides and back. I just love the way choirs, and music in general, sound in large churches. The sound just has such an ethereal quality to it.

If you're interested and you have satellite TV, the concert was recorded for broadcast on EWTN. It'll be shown on Dec. 23rd at 11pm and Dec. 25th at 2pm, both EST.

Happy Birthday, Rich!

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!

Boy, it seems like forever since I got up early to stand in line for tickets for The National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony. But the day finally arrived! Here's a picture of the tree before...

and after.

The ceremony itself was great. There were a lot of musical numbers with some great performers and even Santa made an appearance.

President Bush gave a short speech and Laura (with the help of two young girls whose fathers are serving in Iraq) flipped the switch that lit the tree.

At the base of the tree are several train displays that are a lot of fun to watch.

Around the tree are 54 smaller trees - one for each state and territory.

There's a nativity.

There's a Santa's workshop.

It was a beautiful evening. The ceremony lasted about an hour. Afterward, I hung around just a bit for the crowd to thin and get a few more pictures.

I could do this every year!

My Pumpkin Patch is Growing!

With our whirlwind trip up to New Jersey, we didn't do much sight-seeing in DC with the kids. We were all too exhausted. But, they'll be back in 3 weeks after finals for Christmas. November flew by being that for the entire month we either had guests or were out of town ourselves.

When the kids went back to Florida I took a few days to relax, catch up on laundry and grocery shopping and just taking it easy. I also got 8 more pumpkins done. Are you keeping count?

I'm not sure about the pumpkin in the lower right in the group below. When laying out all the blocks it seems to get lost in the busy background. I mentioned to Rich that I might replace it but he says that I should leave it. What do you think?

I Love a Parade!

Marcus and Kristina flew in Wednesday night for Thanksgiving. We met them at the airport where they were wearing these turkey sweaters that they made themselves. Marcus' turkey lost his googly eye. It did get fixed but I didn't get a picture. Don't you love how Marcus' turkey has a hat and Kristina's has a bonnet?

We were going to be driving up to New Jersey to spend Thanksgiving with some of Rich's family. Since the kids were flying into Baltimore, we picked them up and just kept right on driving north. We got just a couple of hours sleep before heading into New York City to see the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade! I really love parades. To say it was crowded would be an understatement. We never did get close enough to see what was going on at the street level, but we could see all the balloons just fine. Here's the crowd. See the clowns? That's the parade.

I don't know how Rich got some of these shots. There was a building just to our left and we wouldn't see the balloons until they passed the building. Then, there was a traffic light in the way. Also, a lady who was sitting on a railing. She (or her hat) ended up in almost all of our pictures. Did I mention that Rich took all the pictures with his arm extended straight up over his head to get over the crowd? It's amazing he was able to get as many good shots as he did. Here are a few:

We got back to Rich's sister's house just as the other guests were arriving and had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner. We had such a great time visiting with Rich's brother, sister, cousin and lots of nieces and nephews. Since we've never lived close by we miss a lot of these family gatherings. We're really happy that spending this year in DC puts us within driving distance.

More Pumpkins

I had been dreading the flight back to DC, but it turned out to not be too bad. I think because it was broken up into shorter segments it made traveling so much easier. Our longest stretch was from Honolulu to LA which was only a little over 5 hours. Compared to the 8-1/2 hour flight from Dallas to Honolulu on the way out it was an easy flight.

Besides all the fun things I've posted about we had a great time relaxing on the beach, walking around Waikiki looking at the shops (I hate shopping, but I loved looking at some of the windows already decorated for the holidays), and trying out some of the local restaurants. I made it to two fabric stores, read two books and completed 7 more pumpkins.

We had such a great time, but were so happy to get back to DC. We got back in Tuesday morning (before Thanksgiving) to find that most of the leaves that I'd been admiring in the previous weeks had fallen off the trees. It was such a such a stark difference from when we'd left, but especially from the tropical setting we'd just been enjoying.

Some Random Hawaii Pics

I wanted to share these pictures even though they didn't make it into any of my earlier posts.

These statues were outside a hotel that we drove by.

It's raining in this picture of some waves at the north shore. See the surfers?

We watched this sand sculpture as it was being made in the entrance to our hotel. One day eight tons of sand were unloaded and four or five days later the sculpture was complete.

This sculpture of turtles was in the entrance of our hotel.

I've never seen birds like these before, but I saw them all around the island. They are Brazilian Cardinals.

A yellow hibiscus, the state flower of Hawaii.