Sometimes it’s about getting out of the house

On some level, this was a reasonably full weekend. On Friday night, my husband and I went to his office Christmas party. On Saturday, I had the dress rehearsal for my Christmas concert, and the 9-year-old had his Cub Scout Raingutter Regatta (he came in third for the pack!) and a laser tag birthday party. On Sunday, the 7-year-old went to a trampoline park birthday party and I performed in the choir concert. My whole family went to this, including my parents, and then we had a nice dinner at home afterwards (complete with Christmas cookie baking!)

However, on Saturday afternoon, after the laser tag party, there was a lot of complaining and naughtiness going on. While some kids had gone out and about, others had not. My 11-year-old was still in his pajamas at 4 p.m. It was raining, which meant a lot of normal activities were going to be incredibly unpleasant. It was looking like it was going to be a long evening.

So we decided to drive to see the Herr’s Factory lights. One of our former sitters used to take the kids to see this display every year, but that was now 4+ years ago, so the kids didn’t really remember it. My husband and I had never gone. We loaded everyone in the minivan and made the trek.

It was…OK. The lights were nice, colorful, festive, etc., but the display was fairly small. We drove through it in less than 10 minutes. Even adding a stop for pretzels at the WaWa across the street, I’m not sure it was really something that was worth going out of our way for on its own. It would be great if we lived 20 minutes away. An hour was probably pushing it.

But…sometimes it’s about getting out of the house. When we got home it was time for dinner and bed. For two hours, everyone was strapped into their seats and thus causing minimal damage to each other or the furniture. That certainly put me in more of a Christmas spirit.