Holiday Traditions

Well, Thanksgiving is over, and soon NaNoWriMo will be over too. (I expect to finish on November 30th.) So it's time to start indulging in some holiday traditions. Here are a few things we did this weekend.

Since our son is a "trainiac," we went to the Wonderland Express exhibit at the Chicago Botanic Garden Saturday afternoon. This is the winter version of their garden train exhibit. Chicago landmarks are recreated out of natural materials, and model trains run beside them. I would show you some of the pictures, but they're not loading to the blog properly. The pictures can't really do justice to the snow falling down (they made it with water and a small amount of vegetable oil) or the way they managed to give the cityscapes such detail and depth.

Today, we made our annual trip to Kristkindlmarkt in Chicago's Daley Plaza. The weather was warm for once, and since we went early, the crowds weren't too bad. Alex insisted on being carried most of the time, which made we wish we'd brought his stroller. Since I was carrying him much of the time, I wasn't able to take pictures. We bought glass ornaments, little houses for our Christmas village, and a Christmas present for a friend. We also indulged in potato pancakes, fried apple fritters, chocolate-covered fruit on skewers, and nuts. We checked out the windows at Macy's (formerly Marshall Fields), where they told the story of the Virginia who wrote to the newspaper editor and asked if there was a Santa Claus. While the sets were elaborately crafted out of paper, only a few windows were devoted to the story this year, which was a little disappointing.

Finally, before we put Alex to bed, we listened to Christmas music. Only my husband pulled out his Twisted Christmas CDs, and we listened to some of the more child-friendly songs, like "Toy Shack." Alex put on headphones (much too big for him), and we danced. It was a lot of fun.

What are your holiday traditions?