Garden Lights. Holiday NIghts.

It's Christmas Eve Eve, and we've had a fun, lovely and even productive day getting all ready for Christmas. It's rather warm this year and quite rainy and stormy, but we've mostly been able to avoid being out IN it. It's very spring-like around here.

In the last post, I forgot to include Libby's first letter to Santa! She wrote it over the weekend and sent it to Santa via our elf, "Elfie."

But our weekend was capped off with a special holiday treat, "Garden Lights. Holiday Nights." at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens.

Michael's Aunt Chrissy found out about this event last year and wanted to take us and the Gordons, but the timing didn't work out. So this year, she emailed us a few weeks back that she really wanted us to go and would like to send us as our Christmas gift. Awesome!

So we determined Sunday night was the best opportunity. Of course the kids LOVE looking at Christmas lights, and Saturday night we did the driving tour of our neighborhood and a few others. That was just a primer for Sunday!

We surprised the kids and made it a whole event, complete with a stop for dinner at The Varsity on the way down. The babes wolfed down their naked dogs, fries, and chocolate milk. I also wolfed down my chili dog, onion rings and frosted orange. Michael enjoyed his meal, too. Always a hit, and now I've had my fill for six months to a year or so.

The event was PACKED, so we parked off-site and had a lovely walk through the entrance with even more lights, plus a visit with "Santa Pooh." Matthew was simply delighted with this unexpected greeter, as was Libby!

Inside the gates, the lights were plentiful and beautiful.

Libby liked everything to do with fountains and water the most, while Matthew was especially entranced by the Celestial Orbs, coordinated with the music.

Since Aunt Chrissy couldn't be with us, Michael and I did our best to document as much as possible. This proved to be challenging at times, especially since we didn't think to bring a stroller to pop Matthew into. But he and Libby were both troopers on the walking -- Libby in particular with the walk TO the garden and back to the car.

But Libby helped keep track of the little guy, too! Boy she is becoming so responsible.

Before we left, we even found a bunch of small working trains and tracks! Matthew particularly loved seeing one of them come through the tunnel, but he was pretty giddy over the whole train experience.

And Libby ended her evening by decorating a gingerbread man and a snowman!

You can experience this special holiday event, too! We took a bunch of videos that you can view by clicking the links below.

Garden Lights. Holiday Nights.
Red & Green Tree over the Pond
Celestial Orbs
Orbs 2
Rainforest
Trains
More Trains
Gingerbread Man Decorating

We had an absolutely wonderful time and we even chose a cold (not rainy!) night. The atmosphere was great. We look forward to many more visits in the future! Hopefully with Aunt Chrissy, too. Thank you, Aunt Chrissy!