Flashback: Christmas Decorating in Washington

Still trying to catch up. We're finally into December! My hope is to get a post up every day for a few days to get caught up by next week, so keep checking back!

Jonathan and Mommy surprised everyone and showed up at Gamma and Gampa's doorstep for a weekend of Christmas decorating only a week after our Thanksgiving visit. Aunt Debbie (or Bebo as I called her when I was tiny and I now have Jonathan calling her) was heading to U.P. on Saturday to spend a day with Gamma. They planned to decorate for Christmas, watch Christmas movies, and have girl time. I was feeling a little bummed about missing it, so the night before, I decided to head up and surprise them. We had so much fun!

Jonathan was such a good helper (if you define helping by pulling the ribbon all the way down the hall in the opposite direction of where you're planning to use it)! He was excited to be included.

At least he was sweet and brought it back for Bebo to gather back up.

The view was as beautiful as ever, with the snow-capped Olympics looming large over the Sound at sunset. We had a wonderful day with Gamma and Bebo. We convinced Bebo to spend the night instead of making the looooong trip back to her house on Samish Island. We had so much fun!

On Sunday, we headed to the mall for Jonathan to see Santa. More on that later. While we were there, Gampa and Jonathan went up and down and up and down on the escalator. Jonathan had a blast!

On the way home from seeing Santa, we stopped at Great-Grandma Bertha's house for a while. Jonathan loves getting rides on Great Grandma's walker with wheels. He loves giving rides too (and gave one to Gampa all around the house). Since Great Grandma and Aunt Victoria were unable to come to Jonathan's birthday party, Jonathan was spoiled with some pretty fun birthday presents while we were there. He loved seeing his Great Grandma.

One of Jonathan's favorite events of the visit? Time at the park with Uncle Gary. They spent a couple of hours at a nearby park and Jonathan ran circles around his uncle. (He's been known to run them around Mommy as well.)

We had a great time on our impromptu visit, and decided to stay a couple of extra days before heading home and back to Daddy and our Christmas tree. We finally heard our own tree crying for decorations and made the four-hour trek home. What a nice benefit of living closer to our families . . . impromptu visits are a lot more fun now!