Hudson Valley.

A terrible collage of BlackBerry photos: In New York City. Poor attempt at a self-portrait. Winter WonderLights. Muddy puddles, although you can't really see the mud. A traditional candlelit Christmas meal. Lots of lights, some quite creepy. Etc, etc.

We visited Winter WonderLights in the Hudson Valley on Saturday. Set in the woods by Washington Irving's home, the display of lights were inspired by his story of Rip Van Winkle (which, after a bit of a refresher, I remembered from my American Lit course I took sophomore year at BYU). It was a little muddy, but I had my wellies & was a happy camper with all of the pretty lights. Afterwards, we went to Van Cortlandt Manor & saw how Christmas might be celebrated in the mid-1800's - somewhat uncomfortably, it turns out (chamber pots? No thank you). Everyone in our group was assigned a part to play for the faux holiday festivities. Through the unfortunate selection of a white bean out of a hat, I was made Queen for the evening & got to boss everyone around while they continually bowed. Being a queen sort of made me uncomfortable (I don't love being the center of any sort of attention), but it was fun to command Bryan to do something gross! for an hour or so. That was actually his part - to be gross.