Pre-holidays fun at National Harbor.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas... by which I mean our tree has been up for weeks, insanely complicated holiday travel plans have been made, and I've watched "White Christmas." It doesn’t hurt that it's finally started to get cold here (not that any of the Niemans have complained about the unseasonably warm November.) This also means that the planes, trains and automobiles fiasco kicks off next weekend, so we were determined to enjoy this last one at home. Or at least get a whole bunch of things ticked off our pre-holiday to-do list.

Unfortunately for my plans to clean out the attic, it's "that time of the year" for grad students again, so Seth had to study rather than sort through TA-50. Or so he claimed. This meant the little early bird and I had lots of time on our hands, so we spent our weekend mornings finishing our Christmas shopping at her current favorite place, Barnes & Noble. (She also tore Dad away from his statistics homework long enough to go to the park Saturday, where he let her do this.)

By Sunday afternoon I had done load upon load of laundry, navigated Target with a cranky Finley, fought with a broken vacuum cleaner for hours, and was beginning to develop a Cinderella complex. So Seth took pity on me and caved to my demand for a family afternoon at National Harbor. I had been dying to go see the earliest-lit Christmas tree in the NCR, and take Finley to the winter wonderland at the Gaylord complex.

National Harbor didn't disappoint. It never does, honestly- an anomaly of a place around here with plenty of parking, no crowds, and restaurants that seat you with no reservations. Finley rode the carousel

and had the playground all to herself (probably due to suddenly winter-like winds Sunday).

The ever-indulgent Seth also took us on the Capital Wheel at sunset, something that had been on my DC bucket list for awhile. It was every bit as spectacular as promised, with views like this one. (Photos don't do it justice, as with most terrific views.)

Finley's favorite part seemed to be the emergency button inside the gondola, and Seth's was the big screens showing the Vikings-Packers game all over the harbor complex.

He did get to watch a good chunk of the game at the sports bar next to the winter wonderland. After the obligatory blurry family photo. All in all, a nice pre-holiday weekend was had by all. Except for the Vikings loss, of course.

Speaking of obligatory family photos, we did get a very understanding stranger to try to take a decent one for our Christmas card. No dice, but these hilarious outtakes made us laugh.

And the other photo of the week is this one, of Finley in her new courtesy-of-Grandma Hello Kitty PJs, sweet talking Dad into another bedtime story.