We went to Tenth Presbyterian's Christmas Eve service as always. We love the candlelight part. As extra entertainment, Hannah happened to notice a mom's hair catch on fire while she was trying to keep her daughter's hair out of the fire. Good news, apparently she was able to extinguish her hair quickly. After the service, we went back to Timmy and Sarah's for their annual Christmas Eve party.

On Christmas morning, Jane was the first kid up. Thankfully she was happy to hang out upstairs for a while to let the other kids sleep in a little more. My girls woke up next and kept her company.

Finally the boys started stirring. Timmy and Andy hung two sheets so the girls came from upstairs, and the boys came from Hank's room in the back.

They were all excited to see the mountain of presents, of course.

Present opening is always a little chaotic and goes by so quickly. I love it, but I also love the quiet after the storm when everyone is happily enjoying their new gifts.

Believe it or not, Ellie was most excited about the Nutella she got! It was literally her favorite present.

She really was pumped about all of her presents.

Here she is living her best life!

That night we all (Lanzones, Sarah's mom, and the Hammonds) met up for dinner at an Italian restaurant in town.

It was our first time at this restaurant, and it was so good!

Andy couldn't quite get everyone in the picture, but here's most of us.

And there's the other side of the table.

After dinner, Kelsey, Trent, Papa J, and Uncle John came back with us to Timmy and Sarah's house.

Papa J and John went home after a few cigars, but Kelsey and Trent stayed over until after midnight.

We had so much fun talking and playing games. It was another highlight for me! 

 

The day after we toured the DC museums, we got on a train for Philadelphia.

It's a two hour ride from DC to Philly. It's just a delightful and easy trip.

When we got to Philly, we split up. I went with the kids to Andy's parents' house where they would be staying because I needed to wrap all of the Christmas presents that I had mailed there. 

Andy took our luggage to his brother and sister-in-law's house because that's where we always stay. We all met up for dinner at Andy's parents' house though so the cousins all got to see each other.

The next day, we split up again. This time Grandma treated the girls to seeing the Nutcracker at the Philadelphia ballet, Papa J took Hank and Joey to see the movie "Puss in Boots," and Timmy and Andy went to the Sixers game. They met up with Kelsey and Trent who were also going to the Sixers game.

Thankfully the theater where we saw Nutcracker was pretty close by because it was COLD outside...and windy. I love this picture of the three girls because you can really see how windy it was.

The Nutcracker was amazing and ended up being one of the highlights of our trip. 

After the Nutcracker, we walked a couple of blocks away to the Cheesecake Factory. That was so fun! 

Back and Timmy and Sarah's house, Andy and I got lots of time with Hank and Jane.

Jane, especially, was very happy to be entertained by her silly Uncle Andy.

Two years ago, the last time we went to Philadelphia for Christmas, we flew to Washington DC first for a day. That was during Covid, so pretty much all of the museums were closed. It worked out well because we just did all of the outside stuff, which we loved. This year we went back to DC so that we could go to all of the museums that we missed last time. 

Our hotel was really close to the mall, so in the morning we just walked over.

The first museum we went to was the Air and Space Museum. There was a lot of great stuff there. This was the suit Neil Armstrong wore when he walked on the moon!

Looking at some of the original Wright brothers' planes was amazing too.

Andy and Joey were excited about the Star Wars model.

Next up, we went to the American History Museum. This museum was definitely a let down. We were expecting to see things about the Revolutionary War, Civil War, Great Depression, etc. Instead, it was more about pop culture. Here the kids were using a computer program to digitally try on outfits from different eras.

This was a "Price is Right" game where you had to try to guess the prices of items in different time periods.

I was excited to see the ruby red slippers that Judy Garland wore as Dorothy.

They also had some original costumes from Star Wars.

After that museum, we walked around trying to find a place to eat lunch, and ended up going to a food truck. There were tons of food trucks around because there really aren't too many restaurants near the mall. It was a little cold sitting outside, but we made it work.

Our last museum of the day was the Natural History Museum. This museum was great, but we were pretty tired by this point.

We did see a lot of cool things. There was a fascinating area with skeletons of dozens, if not hundreds of animals. Joey found a caiman skeleton, which is his school's mascot.

Ellie and Andy had fun trying to recreate this picture from Thanksgiving.

By the end of the day, we were pretty exhausted. We had logged almost 20,000 steps. We walked back to our hotel, climbed into our beds, and watched Christmas movies on TV for the rest of the evening. It was lovely.