Somehow my sister managed to talk me into going downtown last night to see the annual lighting of the Christmas tree. Thomas woke up from his nap on the wrong side of the bed, so I almost bailed, but his happy mood returned and he kept asking when we were going to see the tree?? So I threw all their warm clothes in the car, dressed them in warm base layers and headed north.
It was pretty cold outside! It wasn't sub-zero or anything, but when you aren't moving around it gets cold pretty quick at 20 degrees. Luckily they have more warm clothing than I ever imagined we would need.
Thomas was more than happy to accompany me to check out the different vendors at the event. It was super crowded, so we only made it to the Franz bakery one. They had the most adorable "kid-sized" loaves of bread and cookies. Thomas was pretty excited about his cookie until he realized he couldn't eat it with his mittens on. I offered to feed it to him, but he was convinced I was going to eat it. So he took a few bites of it before deciding it was "too cold!" and put his mittens back on.
He finally agreed to let me feed it to him. I tried to get a photo of it, but the camera was a little irritable with the low light and cold weather and kept refusing to take photos. I was a little surprised at that - this thing is supposed to be an awesome camera. I didn't see any caveats about "Only in the contiguous US" - though that little phrase pops up more than you would expect. Grrr.
Finally the countdown and lighting of the tree! Thomas couldn't see over the crowds, so I lifted him up on my shoulders. My mom had to steady him up there, but he was pretty pumped about his high perch once he realized the advantage. Plus he was pretty excited about the tree lighting up - he spent the rest of the night doing a mock countdown (well, up...) and yelling about a lit tree.
So while I wasn't too impressed about the whole thing, Thomas was certainly glad we went. Oh to be as easily amused with life as a toddler is. Why do we have to grow up...?
Henry didn't seem to mind the cold too much, especially if he was being held. His snow suit I bought him a few months ago is getting kinda tight, but I did manage to get it zipped up. Guess I need to dig out Thomas' from last year before the winter it over.
As a side note for those who also like photography, these photos are the first time I really pushed the ISO up. I think I was at 4000 ISO to get the photos to take in the awful lighting. I still had some issues with having to use a slower shutter speed, but I didn't want to go past 6000 - all of the reviews I read said that it was really poor quality beyond that. But honestly the photos turned out way better than I thought they would There is some obvious grain if you blow them up full size, but for the purpose of the blog, not bad at all!