From our house to yours, Merry Christmas. May your celebration be filled with love and peace and joy.

I’m lying in bed at my folks, Rudi asleep at my side. All our presents are wrapped and under the tree, and I have Christmas Eve on Sesame Street playing on the VCR. But my eyes keep closing, so it will be a challenge to get to the end.

Here are three beautiful things from the past week:

1. Driving north, so late at night that it’s nearing morning, Rudi and I see a meteor fall through the sky.

2. Two feet of snow blanket the District. Rudi, John, and I spend the afternoon out playing in it. We throw snowballs, make snow angels (okay, that might just have been me), and laugh until we’re exhausted. It’s a rare treat for the mid-Atlantic.

3. On the way home from church tonight, Dad and I see fireworks light up the horrizon. I like to think of it as someone expressing their joy to the world.

What beautiful things have you noticed lately?

Wishing you a very merry Christmas!

Rudi and I are trying to pull things together so that we can leave tonight. Rudi thought when I suggested we consider leaving tomorrow morning instead that it meant I would need ’til morning to get ready, whereas I just needed the extra headspace to finish things up.

Getting there…

This is my first year participating in the Virtual Advent Tour and, like many others, I had a hard time deciding how to narrow the focus of my post. At first, I thought songs — particularly some of the more unusual pieces — because Christmas is inseparable from its music for my family and me. But coming this late in the month, a lot of other people have covered music. Although I have enjoyed each and every link and video you’ve offered up, I wanted something a little different.

And then I realized that living in Washington, D.C., gives me a rather unique perspective.

So, I offer you a tour of some of the District’s seasonal sights*. Lace up your sturdiest walking shoes (boots might be a wise choice after this weekend’s 20 inches of snowfall) and let’s head down to the National Mall:

You may have seen President Obama and the First Family light the National Christmas Tree on tv. This is it in person, taken over the weekend:

The lights weren’t turned on during Saturday’s blizzard, but that’s really just as well. They’re all on a hair-net type contraption that’s draped over a perfectly lovely real tree and it looks hideously ugly when it’s lit.

Without the lights, it’s just a nice tree with some decorations on it. Simple and understated. So, really, this is the National Christmas Tree at its very best.

Did you know there’s also a National Menorah? It’s also on the Ellipse in front of the White House, and a new “flame” is lit at sundown each night of Hanukkah.

Not every day can be filled with romping in the snow or reading your favorite novels. Sometimes an Alexander kind of day comes along, and all you can do is weather it and know that a day only lasts 24 hours, even if sometimes it feels so much longer.

I am not surprised that such a day would occur on the darkest day of the year. We should be glad that it was a short day because I wouldn’t have wanted to cram in any additional missed shipping deadlines, cat vomit, scones that didn’t rise, burnt cookies, forgotten meals, deleted material, and crabby attitudes. All I can say is thank goodness today was a snow day. I can’t begin to imagine what would have happened if I’d had such a calamitous day while in the office.

Tomorrow is a new day, after all, full of promise and hope. May it be better than today was!

You always find the most interesting residents of our neighborhood at the Dupont Circle park. They sit around the fountain, lounge on the benches, and play chess on the tables. And the same is true after blizzards.

This lady was hanging around just outside the Circle:

These folks were sort of sinking down into the grass:

A Nats fan wanders past:

A fair maiden sits in the moonlight:

And then there was some late night mischief over at one of the chess tables:

For the record, neither of them had very good cards.

(More wintry photos tomorrow, since I have a snow day from work. Gotta love D.C.!)