The Fall of Fall

We needed to get the kids out of the house on Friday, a dreary, drippy, grey day, and decided to take Uncle Tim to his favorite haunt, which Ryan likes to call the "Cow Store" but we all know as Chik-Fil-A. Got the kids to bed that night and took off to a friend of Ainsley's for a short holiday gathering with people I barely know, but it was good to do adult stuff (even though I was more interested in playing ping-pong or Wii with the numerous kids running around) and play "guess the meat ingredient" in the dips and random balls of puffs sitting in the kitchen. Unfortunately, Erin was a bit of a fusspill for her grandfather, so we were glad we had called it an early night.

Saturday I worked on more presents and even took the dogs for a walk with Erin on my chest, before heading out with the whole family to the Bull Run Festival of Lights, a nice 2.5-mile rolling trail past and through a multitude of Christmas- and Fairy Tale-themed LED arrangements. We then stopped at "Santa's Village", which turned out to be almost the exact same fairground setup as the Fort Belvoir Octoberfest, only with fire pits for roasting smores (even Ryan talked about "the music in the tent" -- the German oom-pa-pa band from the last event).

Sunday we noticed Ryan's Ya-Ya level pinging, so we got everyone dressed to go visit Mr. Cheese (Charles Edward) to dance to the animatronics, play whatever age-appropriate games, and turn in 169 game tickets for a 5-cent piece of plastic. To no avail, though: Ryan didn't go down for a nap at all, while Erin oddly napped for over 4 hours, nearly three times her usual length. Turns out she had a temperature of 103 degrees (accompanied again by a cold), so she just felt dreadful during the Redskins-Eagles game. Ryan didn't even go to sleep that night until well after 10, while Erin was up every twenty minutes or so between 8 and midnight. So we're just going to leave most of our gifts unwrapped, what say?

Today, despite the fever subsiding and reappearing in the middle of the night, it was finally in the high 90s/low 100s at breakfast, so I didn't feel as guilty to go on the planned jaunt with Tim to the newly renovated American History Museum up in DC. Good thing to do on the coldest day of the year (4 degrees with the wind chill), though the venue itself wasn't as grand as I'd hoped. The new Star-Spangled Banner display is pretty cool, but the rest of the museum looked mostly the same. Hit lunch at the Old Post Office, then came home to an again un-napped Ryan, sporting a Niagral Nasal passage himself, and a red and whiny 1-year-old girl who still obviously felt like crap. It was all we could do to enjoy Carraba's take-out and play with Erin's new musical instruments (Ryan on the tambourine, Erin on the bells, Daddy and Uncle Tim on the maracas) before getting everyone medicated and to bed. Here's hoping everyone is semi-coherent for Christmas...