Some images of the season for you. First, our favorite DC Christmas tradition is the trains and miniature building sculptures at the U.S. Botanic Gardens. The sculptures are made entirely from natural materials like bark and leaves. This year, for the first time, they featured landmarks of the world. I couldn’t seem to capture BalletBoy because he wouldn’t stay still. This is him running after Thomas the Train as it passed by the Taj Mahal.
This is two nervous angels in the choir right before their opening performance at the first service at church. The pageant at our church is a Las Posadas pageant, which draws from a Latin American tradition. All the music was in Spanish so Mushroom and BalletBoy had no clue what they were singing.
Finally, here’s Mushroom making his graham cracker gingerbread house with a ice cream cone roof. We got together with our Destination Imagination team so you can see the whole table is covered in various confections and a giant sugary mess.
And now we’re leaving DC for Christmas in North Carolina, as per our usual tradition. Gifts wrapped up and we’re on our way!
I Capture the Rowhouse 
Hi,
I love you blog. I feel a bit of kinship to you just cause I too am a former teacher and now homeschool my children plus I live near DC. Anywho, I just wanted to know where you got the tie-dye shirts your children are wearing?
Keep up the great work!
Thanks! The tie-dyes aren’t actually ours though – our church uses them as one of the children’s choir outfits! It well cracks me up. We did tie-dying with just Rit dye and it came out cool, but not that multi-colored or bright.