One of our Advent activities this week was to take a walk to
see the lights in the neighborhood. We
ate supper a little bit early, bundled up, and made a pretty big loop to check
out all the decorations. The girls had
fun oohing and ahhing at sparkling shrubbery, Christmas trees in windows, and
deer grazing in lawns.
Equally as enthralling to them, though, were our shadows as
we walked under streetlights, and the moon and stars in the sky above.
I was reminded how seldom the girls are outside after dark.
During the summer, it gets dark long after the girls go to
bed. During the late fall and winter,
when it gets dark much earlier, it’s usually cooler and we spend our outside
time in the mornings and afternoons.
We love to eat out on the weekends, but it’s most often a
Saturday lunch. And on the rare
occasions when we eat out for dinner, we load and unload in the garage.
“Mommy! Is that a
star???”
“Mommy, I love the stars!
I want to pull one down! Can I???”
It’s something I definitely take for granted…obviously being
out at night as an adult, and having grown up “in the country”, having an
unadulterated view of the night sky at my disposal.
And then there were our shadows, ever changing as we walked
under streetlights.
“Look! Our shadow is
behind us!”
“Here it comes…it’s beside us!”
“Wow…look how tall my shadow is, Mommy! I’m growing!”
And the girls erupted in fits of giggles every time I shrieked
“OUCH!” when one of them stepped on my shadow.
Of course we see our shadows in the summer sunshine, but
what a fun lesson in physics it was to talk about the angle of the light and
how shadows are created.
It was a fun night for all of us, and a downright magical
one for me. Not only did I get to enjoy
my babies’ wonderment at the pretty decorations…not only did I relish the four
of us, bundled up tight and walking hand in hand…but I was reminded of the
beauty of discovery.
Oh, and it's okay to bend the rules every once in a while...an earlier supper and a later bedtime were well worth the experience.
A merry Christmas to me, indeed.
1 comment:
What a sweet evening. I'm inspired to do that with our girls now. We drive around and look at Christmas lights, but walking is a much different experience, it's true.
Post a Comment