Merry Christmas

If you celebrate Christmas, I hope you have a merry one. If you celebrate something else this time of year, I wish you good cheer in your celebrations as well. May they be full of family, friends, and good times. My Christmas looks a little different this year but I'm looking forward to it.
This will be my first Christmas as a married lady. In the past, Joey and I haven't spent the entire holiday together. I would normally head up to my parents by myself (with Delilah) on or around Christmas eve and then stay through dinner on Christmas day. Afterward, I would head to Joey's house to spend the rest of the evening with his family. Since we are married this year I wanted to start our own traditions and spend the holidays together. We decided our holiday family schedule around Joey's work schedule. His job is 'essential' meaning that at least one person has to go in everyday to do some work. He found out in October that he would work on Christmas and New Year's day but be off on Thanksgiving. We headed up to my parents'
house for Thanksgiving and we are heading to his dad's house when he gets off work tomorrow. His dad lives about 15 minutes away so it works.

Anyway, at work this past week in DC, we did a few Christmasy things during lunch. Two days in a row I ran to see the tree at the White House. It isn't the most exciting thing to see during the day but they have a nice train display at the base of the main tree that was pretty cool. They had at least 10 trains going when I was there. They also have a tree for each state and US territory and the decorations are designed by school students from each state.
On Thursday, I headed over to the Botanical Gardens to check out their holiday display and I'm so glad I did! It was gorgeous! They had a very elaborate train display that was like a huge (and sometimes tiny) fairy village. In the main conservatory they had very awesome replicas of some famous buildings in DC made completely out of plant materials. I had a great time taking pictures here! It wasn't too crowded during our lunch break but I've heard that the lines can get a little long to get in during peak hours.  I wanted to share a few photos with you.

Pretty balls. Can you see me in the reflection?

The Capitol building

The Washington Monument with the Lincoln peeking out in the distance.

Capitol building again.

The Jefferson Memorial

See Jefferson in there? So intricate.

The Lincoln Memorial with the Washington Monument in the background.

Lincoln!

The Smithsonian Castle.

The Library of Congress

The Supreme Court with the Capitol building in the background.

Top of the Capitol building

Lincoln again.

The Museum of the American Indian

Looking up from the entryway.

The White House

The top of the Supreme Court building.

 The train display was much more difficult to photograph. Just trust me that it was awesome. Here are a few I took.

A fairy land inside the hole of a tree!! These were awesome.

Mushrooms by the train tracks.

A cool castle with a dragon on top.

A giant troll made out of plants.

A train!

Train bridge.

So if you are ever in DC around Christmas, I would recommend checking this display out. It is free and fun. I think kids would especially love the train display.