Saturday, November 27, 2010

Post #100

I wish we had a more momentous occasion for this momentous post, but we'll settle for the lighting of the Christmas tree ceremony in Leonardtown Square.

We had a lull in the local events over the last month when the weather was supposed to turn cold. They should have planned a few more festivals because while the rest of the country has been in a deep freeze, we've been flirting with the upper 60s for daytime highs for the majority of November.

The temperature did drop for yesterday's kick off of the Christmas season so we brought out Audrey's snow jacket that Grandma Vicki picked up in Park City on über-sale when Audrey was only a few months old. It was such a good deal that we bought it for the next year's season. It's a little big on her right now but it should be a great fit by the time the cold settles in.


The ceremony was a really neat event. It was put on by a volunteer firefighter association and the stars of the show were the 10 fire engines that took kids on rides around town. They also lead Santa into town with lights-a-flashin'. Audrey signed "More! More!" after each one went by.


This was by far the most attended event we have been to since we moved here. Audrey had clearly reached her limit so we watched Santa ride into town on his tractor-pulled sleigh and then pushed our way through the huge crowd to depart about five minutes before the tree was lit. Completely uncool, we know, but the prospects of sitting in a car with a screaming kid for an hour to go the mile back to our house wasn't very appealing. We made our quick exit and Audrey thanked us. Now that the crowds are gone, we'll take her back to town to see the tree whenever she wants.

Thanksgiving

Wow. Halloween was our last post? We'll follow it up with another holiday - Thanksgiving!

What did we celebrate Thanksgiving with? Christmas eggs, of course! Audrey had her first taste of this Steffen family tradition and surprisingly, the mushrooms were her favorite part.


Next up was another family tradition, ripping up bread  for stuffing while watching Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Audrey wasn't very interested in the parade aside from the Sesame Street float, which was strategically located at the beginning of the parade for all the young kids with no attention spans. She instead was interested in eating about 3 pounds of the stuffing bread.


After she got her fill of bread, we went on a little family trip to the park for a wagon ride around the football fields. It must be a Maryland tradition for the boys/men to get out of the house on Thanksgiving morning to play football because in our small local park there were three pickup games being played with full teams of at least a dozen players on each side.

We came home from the park, cooked a fairly traditional dinner (stuffing, sweet potatoes, dry turkey, and pecan pie), chatted with family on the computer, and called it a night. All in all, it was a pretty good start to the holiday season!