I haven’t really had a chance to finish editing the “real” photos that I took on vacation in Tennessee, but I took tons of pictures on my iPhone with Hipstamatic and Instagram and wanted to share them with you for this week’s picture post! This is kind of a long post so bear with me! 🙂
We had a really fun vacation! It snowed while we were visiting my mother and father in law’s house, and we got to really relax and have fun.
This year was Zachary’s first real exposure to Christmas and the traditions that surround it. Although our family is Jewish and does not celebrate Christmas, my husband’s family celebrates the holiday so it was nice to join them for their traditions. Zachary thought the tree was very interesting and had fun investigating the ornaments & gifts (and trying to rip off the name tags- lol). He also enjoyed decorating the holiday cookies, which was a first for me, too! The first cookie picture were the ones Zachary decorated, and the second were ones that Adrian and I did.
One night we went out to dinner at Cootie Brown’s, a fun restaurant in Johnson City, TN. They have an awesome food selection and a gigantic beer menu. Something I actually love about visiting my in-laws is that Tennessee has a pretty fantastic variety of local beers available, which isn’t something you’d normally think about TN. One night we picked up a bunch of different local beers at the grocery store (since they’re sold individually) and got to try some interesting (and yummy) stuff!
It snowed on Christmas and I was beyond thrilled as I had never seen snow fall from the sky before. You’re probably in shock, but I’m a Florida girl and have only ever seen snow maybe two or three times EVER in my life so this was a pretty major life event for me – haha! I headed outside to take a bunch of pictures including a few selfies 🙂 While I was frolicking in the snow, Adrian and Zachary were taking funny self portraits. The one below is my favorite (and my current iPhone background)!
Here are some fun Hipstamatic/Instagrams I took in the snow:
Amazingly, even the birds were out at the feeder, enjoying the snow:
Zachary loved loved loved looking out the window watching the snow fall and seeing everything covered in beautiful white snow. And he was even more excited to be outside playing in it! He loved touching and walking through the snow, and did not want to come back inside when we were done playing. I took most of those pictures on my real camera – can’t wait to finish editing & post 🙂
We took an impromptu trip to Washington DC to have some time away just us as a mini-vacation with no baby. It was fun! I took a few iPhone shots on the drive through Virginia. it was so scenic and gorgeous. I’m convinced now that snow can make anything look beautiful. LOL.
We had dinner at Capitol City Brewery and checked out the National Christmas Tree. It was almost time for it to be taken down for the near year – we couldn’t leave the area without taking a look. It was blisteringly cold and windy that night though but after 20 minutes out walking around you pretty much couldn’t feel your hands, feet, or face anymore, so I didn’t mind standing out trying to take pictures of the gigantic tree in the freezing cold after a while. I guess that’s how people survive in cold places, huh? Haha! I took the photo below using my iPhone 4’s HDR mode.
The next day we drove around exploring the area and then checked out the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, which was closed for renovations the last time we had visited.
On our way out of DC we spotted a couple helicopters flying around, and noticed it was “Marine One” – they always travel in groups of three so you can’t tell if the President is on board. We’re pretty sure we saw three of them, so we wondered if this was the real Marine One or perhaps a decoy?! Fun to think about though!
After getting back from DC (which is about a 6 hour drive from my in-laws home) we spent a day relaxing and packing up, and then we drove home. We spent a few more days relaxing at home after we got back from vacation before going back to work/school last Monday.
It was so great to take such a long vacation and spend so much time with my husband and son not thinking about work or obligations. We made so many great memories – I can’t wait to share even more of the “real” pictures with you guys!
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I love Zachary’s cookies! Also, I have plenty of snow, if you want some!!!
That Christmas tree photo has a surreal look about it, great pic!