Christmas Lights

Our tradition--a week or so before Christmas--is to visit a particular neighborhood in a nearby city with especially festive Christmas lights and walk around. This neighborhood has several blocks of homes that have huge Christmas light displays (my sister calls them over-decorated).

Tonight when I mentioned to Lukas that we were going to go see Christmas lights, the first thing he said was, "Are we going to have hot chocolate?" He remembers last year when we walked around that neighborhood, and I made hot chocolate in his sippy cup for the first time (two things here: if it's too hot, it will expand and leak out of the sippy cup; and if it's too hot, well, it's too hot for his mouth!) It ends up being slightly lukewarm chocolate.

I told him, yes, I would make hot chocolate for him. He got a giddy, excited look on his face and said, "How about hot chocolate mixed with cold chocolate, would that be good?" I said yes. Then he said, "How about hot chocolate mixed with limeade?" Nope!

So now we've added to the tradition: we drive there, get the stroller out, and walk around WITH HOT CHOCOLATE.

Lukas did great walking the whole way, while Natalie is strapped in the back, facing backward in the Sit N Stand and Konrad is in the front with his carseat snapped in. We weren't certain Natalie would be stable enough in the back of the stroller, since it doesn't have a supported back in that position, but she does fine. She does get tired more quickly, though, without the back support!

Both Lukas and Natalie loved the lights and it was great to see their wide-eyed expressions. Konrad slept through the adventure, but he'll enjoy it next year!