Merry Christmas...Passed and Presents

Before Christmas, Andy and I went to the Fredrick Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids to see their "Christmas Traditions Around the World" exhibit. It was really interesting and very beautiful. The whole interior of the building was filled with Christmas trees, each decorated to represent a different country. There was also several displays telling Christmas stories and legends from around the world. My favorite tree was from Ukraine; it was covered in beautiful, lacey spider webs and silver spider ornaments. There is a legend about this tree's decoration: a family had a Christmas tree, but could not afford to decorate it. Late that night, after the family had gone to bed, spiders came out and covered the tree in webs. That next morning, all of the webs turned to silver, and the family came out to find a beautifully decorated tree for Christmas.

Andy and Me in front of the Ukrainian tree

The specialty plant rooms were also open to walk through; I loved the tropical plant room and the southwestern plant room, but the carnivorous plant room was definately my favorite.


Andy and I in the tropical plant room


Cacti in the southwestern plant room


Pitcher plant in the carnivorous plant room

The whole tour was really interesting, but my absolute favorite part of the trip was the minature train they had running through the building. They filled an entire room with miniature replicas of famous buildings in Grand Rapids, made completely from natural materials and had a small caboose running on a track through them. High above, was another track that a larger train followed...so high, in fact, that archways were built to hold the track, large enough to walk under. It was beautiful and fun to watch!

The caboose track with some of the replicas


St. Mark's Episcopal Church


The larger train with the archways

Christmas was nice this year, different than usual, but still very nice. Everyone was sooooooo sick that we cancelled our extended family Christmas. Mom, Dad, Michael and I had a really nice Christmas morning together, but we were missing Aunt Joie. She has always been at our house on Christmas morning to open gifts, but not this year....didn't want to catch any of the cold bugs. I got everything I asked for, plus some....I'm a lucky, happy girl!

Andy arrived later Christmas day and stayed until Saturday. We went Saturday afternoon to my Aunt's house for a family Christmas party and then left to go to his family's Christmas party. I spent a few days with his family and headed back home on Monday. I can't believe how fast Christmas flew up on me this year, and how quickly it flew by....Just put up the tree, and it's already time to take it down. *sigh*