Michael and I pre-celebrated on Monday and went to Lake Lanier’s Magical Night’s of Lights with Jonathan and Taryn.  I don’t know that I’d call the experience magical, but I was certainly glad to get to hang out with the new Mr. and Mrs. Blanton for the first time since their wedding.

 We got to Lake Lanier a little early and decided to skip ice skating with the Gladiators because the rink was tiny tiny tiny.  So we wandered around until it got dark-ish trying to see what we could see, and stopping to get lunch in the lodge somewhere in the middle.  We had the entire restaurant to ourselves until about five minutes before we left.  Apparently people aren’t rushing out to Lake Lanier in the middle of winter, go figure.

Actually getting down to the lake to take a picture of it was surprisingly difficult, but I was determined.  We managed to stumble across what we’re guessing is a wedding venue–it was actually very pretty, sitting out there in the middle of the lake.  Eventually 5:00, the magic hour, rolled around and we headed back to Santa’s Village, which was finally coming to life.  Their snow machine left a little to be desired–it was that weird foamy stuff–but the firepits were wonderful.

They also had a Christmas shop set up inside (big surprise right?) where we got some hot chocolate, apple cider, and I tried on this hat.

Which made me feel a bit like a Who from Whoville…

Eventually we piled into the car to look at lights.

And somewhere in the middle of driving through the lights we stopped to freeze our butts off while watching a live nativity.  It was absolutely worth it just for the donkey.

Mary and Joseph enter stage right with this little guy in tow and he decides that he doesn’t want to move, so the first awesome donkey moment was donkey playing tug of war with Joseph.  The second fantastic moment was when he walked right to the walkway and peed a small lake.  And the third had to be when the wise men entered, and, I guess they were following script, bowed to the donkey.  I wish I had gotten a picture of it.  If they had move a couple of steps to the left it all could have been avoided, but I guess they had practiced one way and preformed their parts the same way over and over again, possibly not realizing that looked like they were bowing to a donkey.  Or maybe they did realize.  I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt on that one, because who knows what they could actually see from under those hats.  I must say that the booming pre-recorded voices did nothing for me–this wasn’t your charming children’s church pageant–but props to the Magical Nights of Lights for actually doing something religious instead of simply bombarding us with Santa Clauses, elves, and candy canes like they could have.  And it was a nice (but cold) break from sitting in a line of cars looking at lights.

Well, I’m off to enjoy the rest of my peaceful(hahaha…peaceful…hahaha…) Christmas with my family.  Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone!