The Davies family is seriously lacking when it comes to the neighbourhood Christmas decorations. Leaving aside the surrounding houses pumping out their kilowatts of flashing light that can probably be seen from space, just up the road is a garden with Santa and a penguin on an inflatable desert island, Snoopy in an aeroplane (with spinning propeller), and an eight-foot fluffy teddy bear. I don't remember which version of the nativity story they're from, but they're pretty impressive.
We decided to cut our losses, and went to find a real Christmas display at our local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Temple. We had one of these in Oakland which did a fantastic array that included
illuminated palm trees, where Tamara
took me as a guest of the Mormon moms many years ago. I can tell you - the Mormons know how to put on a good Christmas show.
Our new local temple? Well, it somewhat lacked Oakland's pizzazz. Sure, there were loads of lights but no palm trees and the nativity scene did not glow while playing music. Inside the visitors' centre was more encouraging, with nativity sets from all over the world and international Christmas trees. There were also lots of polite, smart, clean-cut young men and women all very willing to chat to us. If I get lonely I might pop down there again. I wonder if they serve tea and biscuits.
After that we went in search of the most important Christmas tree in the USA. Everything around DC gets the prefix of "National" - we have the National Cathedral, the National Arboretum, the National Building, Postal, Natural History, etc. Museum, and they decided simply to call the baseball team "The Nationals" to avoid confusion - so it's no surprise that the National Christmas Tree is right outside the front of the White House. There are also lots of mini Christmas trees, one for each of the States, and (most importantly for a toddler) a huge train track. Miss Piggy was the big celebrity at the tree lighting this year, but although Hannah can get tickets to see the Pope we're not high enough up the social ladder to meet Piggy.
We came home and I begrudgingly wrapped some flashing fairy lights around our balcony. They're solar powered, which doesn't impress oil baroness Hannah but, you know, keeps the bills down. The final bit of decorating was on the gingerbread house that Pete got to make at the church Christmas party. There was a 50% loss of icing, marshmallows and sweets on the way from Pete's fingers to the house, but that's builders for you.
Our local temple.
A little reflection.
Here's what's inside. Nice!
Their international Christmas tree...
...with Wales near the top, of course.
Plenty of lights outside. Do they take them down or just leave them up and unlit the rest of the year?
Dashing through the snow. Except this is the warmest December on record, probably because of all the CO2 people are emitting by running their outdoor decorations.
On our way to the National Tree we stopped at the National Museum of American History. They have a new section on innovation, with buttons you can press. Here's Pete with one of the first computers his daddy ever got to play with.
I was too young for this to be one of my first bicycles.
And this is a wall-sized touch screen. Guess how long we stayed here.
The Washington Monument was looking particularly fine that evening.
It's the National Tree!
Close up. OK, I guess, but it could do with a few more lights.
Young Americans.
The Delaware tree had this interesting bauble on. As the 1st State in the Union, I didn't think they liked us.
At church, and Pete is still unconvinced by the man in red (because Jesus is the reason for the season, obvs).
This is more like it! Hannah might have eaten her fair share of construction materials too.
The finished product. Plenty of decoration there.
Oh, and last but very much not least, here's Jack and Amanda's new baby, Oscar! Was Hannah tempted to have another? No, no she was not.
