Decisions, Decisions

Life is always so full of difficult choices. Option A, or Option 2? Eat a cookie now, or eat a cookie later? (The answer is, always, NOW). Take a child to NY for a 24 hour trip for a funeral, or make an overworked John miss a day of work to stay home with him? (Thanks, honey, for staying home). Pay a billion dollars for an invisible fence for the rotten dog, or just let him wander in the far outer reaches of the across the street neighbor's yard? Go yell at the child who has been happily standing in the corner of his crib yammering away and blowing raspberries while he's supposed to be sleeping, or just let him be and hope he eventually goes to sleep? (The surprising answer to that one is that going in and yelling at him actually works).

But the biggest decision of the day - WHAT PHOTOS SHOULD I POST HERE? Because they are all SO DAMN AWESOME and you really need to see them all but I know some of you tend to fall asleep if I post 28 billion photos, so I like to give you the option to only look at, say, 8 billion in a post. And then leave a LINK to see the rest elsewhere. So I don't bore you to tears. So here, for your viewing pleasure, are my favorite eight billion pictures from Dexter and my trip to Longwood Gardens on Tuesday morning. We went so we could actually SEE the inside of the conservatory, which we really could not do on Saturday night when we went with 300 million other people there. But if you get there at 9:30 in the morning, there tends to be more helpful employees there than actual visitors, and you can wander at will, and let a small child push a stroller all by himself with many fewer negative consequences. I highly recommend it.

The red Christmas tree in the new conservatory. Millions of people stood in this spot on Saturday night to try to get this shot. Tuesday morning? Just me and Dex.

Ornament jealousy

Cute little fountain and poinsettia in the main conservatory, around the gold Christmas tree

Dex climbed on some chairs to check out the tree, the water, and the fans on the ceiling.

The aforementioned gold Christmas tree. This one? Looks better at night. I'm not a big fan of the pastel decorations and the random gold crap draped all over the tree.

I like the red tree much better

Every room had a little festive cheer. Poinsettia squirreled away in the jungle room, which I thought looked pretty cool.

And some festive little red branches on a tree near the rose room.

Cute child checking out the leaping water

Now he's on the ledge right below the leaping water, as it leaps over his head. I really love the mural behind him. It "pops."

Stick your finger over the fountain too hard, and water squirts you right in the face...

Ahhh, our favorite spot. Checking out the traveling water.

So, so happy. I would be DELIGHTED with this picture if the dude in the black coat hadn't stepped behind Dex right as I was taking the shot. As it is, still pretty cute.

Perhaps my favorite shot of the day. The boy is just like his father, checking things out to see how they work. Where's that water coming from? Where'd it go? When's it coming back?

Priceless smile.

I have photos from our visit to the train museum yesterday, but they might not get posted til after Christmas. Hope everyone has a lovely holiday. We made cookies for Santa this morning (ok, we ate a lot of cookie dough this morning, and just barely managed to bake enough cookies to put on a plate). It seems that the yammering child has awoken from his nap, so we're going to grab a quick snack, and then head outside to light our Christmas Eve luminaries (ie, candles in paper bags).

Merry Christmas!!