national harbor

We spent the Saturday before the holiday at the mecca which is the National Harbor. Just a quick jaunt over the Potomac not too far from our urban forest, they built a huge complex for conventions (i think the nation's largest) with shops and restaurants. They will have a new children's museum in 2013, but in the meantime they have a launch zone setup with a few mini exhibits (like a bee keeper setup) and an area for guided crafts. They had a craft theme of Holiday traditions around the world with fireworks from Columbia, papal stars from the Philippines, and new year luck plants from Croatia. Aiden was pretty jazzed and I was just glad we somehow managed to avoid crowds and have a nice low key time. We scurried along in the coldest day yet (mid 40s with wind off the water) to visit the tree right by this huge sculpture of a man buried in the sand. Aiden was giddy running between the knees and climbing up the fingers. They even had an outdoor market setup where Aiden and I could not resist the banana s'mores bread. We happened upon a Peeps store (a tie to last weekend's peep car sighting) and ran in to get warmed up. They had other candies like red hots highlighted and the pressable heat index was Aiden's favorite. We left with a batch of chocolate peep reindeer which melted in your mouth and tasted like hot cocoa - yum! We cruised through the Gaylord Xmas decorations (and we'll see if we head back for the big ICE thing they have since it may be more fun when the boys are a little older). We had a hard time deciding between all the restaurants but ended up at Mexican schmancy fairly fancy lunch and my enchiladas suizas were soooo good.