Early Christmas Trip to DC to visit Gran

We took an early christmas trip to DC to visit my mom.  Xander hadn't been there since he was a very little baby and Maya had never been there.  Gran had a set of foam blocks there for Xander to play with and they were an immediate hit.  Xander immediatly wanted to build towers with them.  One of these days I will get him to understand the concept of foundations and stability, but for now building tall towers and having them fall down is way more fun!

We took the kids downtown to the Museum of Natural History so that Xander could see the dinosaurs. I think when we originally told him that he expected to go to a zoo to see dinosaurs. It took him a little while to understand that all the bones were dinosaurs, but after that he thought they were pretty cool.

The ocean exhibits ended up being quite a hit too.  The little aquarium was of course awesome, filled with Nemo and Dori fish.  The whale though was probably the coolest.  Xander was totaly enthralled.



Since we were down on the mall we had to go and ride the carousel too.  Xander had never been on a carousel and was totally excited about it, until he got on, at which point he wasn't so certain.  It didn't take long though before he was having lots of fun!

The trip downtown was a success, but honestly half the fun was getting there and back.  The metro was quite a novelty, and Xander is completely in love with escalators.  Here's Maya having fun on the Metro.



Christmas gifts were a hit.  This was the first year that Xander started to get the gift idea and he had lots of fun opening presents.  Maya totally enjoyed her gifts too, Christmas Poo is awesome!

Opening presents is exhausting work.

What a wonderful start to the christmas holidays!