N.Y.C. X-Mas 2015

A Polar Express Of Our Own

New Hope at Christmas time. This is about the extent of it.

 But we did book passage on the glorious Ivyland Rail for a Polar Express of our very own.

Yuula, Laura, Aesop & Dylan, all aboard 

Cousin love 

Watching the scenery pass by, very slowly 

Photo with the Claus'

November Randoms, IV

unicorn lessons 

 caped and naked

every little girls nightmare 

dancing cowgirls 

hold on Grandma 

heartbreaker 

Santa comes to her

Traditions For The Ageless

Our Christmas Eve traditions went off without a hitch. Yuula loved her Santa pjs, as did Laura and I, who bought each other almost identical sleep pants. Great minds...

Yuula seemed smitten with her ballerina shoes to hang on the tree. She doesn't understand the tradition yet but I'm thinking it does not matter at this point. Sparkly pink things are exciting enough without deeper meaning.

A platter full of carefully chosen cookies (those we had ample to spare) a glass of milk, a carrot for the reindeer and a highly anticipated letter to the man himself. The stage was set and all was left to do was pass the hell out. 

For Yuula, anyhow...

Heeeeeere's Santa!

Uhm, whatcha got in the bag?

Oh! Hey Katie

Katie has a habit to appear abruptly and lurk about for uncertain periods of time, only to disappear into the shadows again, leaving us clueless as to when we'll ever see her again, if at all. 

 She's the one holding Yuula up for this Santa photo op

We shared some delights at Cracker Barrel

We went to see Budd, but he was at home sleeping

We perused Target and did some potential Christmas shopping

An embrace

A sneaky goodbye

...and she's gone again

The Science Of Santa

No known species of reindeer can fly. However, there are hundreds of thousands, even millions of species of living organisms yet to be classified. While most of these are insects and germs, this does not completely rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.

There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. Since Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish & Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total - 378 million according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there's at least one good child in each.

Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with. This is due to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits/second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has .001 seconds to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house.

Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles/household, a total trip of 75.5 million miles; not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once ever 31 hours, plus feeding etc.

So Santa's sleigh must be moving at 650 miles/second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on the earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second. A conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles/hour.

The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-size Lego set (2 lb.); the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 lbs. Even granting that "flying reindeer" (see above) could pull 10 TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with 8, or even 9 reindeer. We need 214,200. This increases the payload - not counting the weight of the sleigh to 353,430 tons. This is four times the weight of the ocean-liner Queen Elizabeth!!!

353,00 tons traveling at 650 miles/second creates enormous air resistance. This will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as a spacecraft reentering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy!!! Per second!!! Each!!! In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within .00426th of a second. Meanwhile, Santa will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity, A 250 lb Santa (seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of this sleigh by 4,315,015 lbs. of force.

Therefore, if Santa ever did deliver presents on Christmas Eve ... he's dead now.

Swiss Christmas (Piss Yr Pants)

ahhhhhhh!

Blitzen's Antler Punctured My Spleen

Ho-Ho-Horror stories into Mo-Mo-Money

Accidental Christmas Awesomeness

We had to drive down to Baltimore on Saturday to pick up a Christmas gift for Yuula that we won on ebay. It was a bargain, trust me. But in order to make it seem like not such a chore we could break it up and stop in Lancaster for a little old world breakfast buffet and check out the National Christmas Center. How bad could it be...

Turns out, it's frigin awesome! We really didn't expect much. Just a chance to stretch our legs and move along. Too bad we had to get going because I could've walked the whole thing again. Grandma and Grandpa joined us for breakfast and the winter wonderland. 

Nice and comfy rocking chairs is a good way to start the tour off

Mom & Dad seemed to get a kick out of the 50' style Christmas. They're old.

"Christmas Around The World" was both informative and imaginative. And slightly scary. I think Yuula was the only one to see that dude lurking in the holly.

There was a legit Woolworth's set up with all the classic toys at classic prices. Some were creepy. Most were amazing. I think I Mom shed a single tear. 

 I think Dad shed two.

They had an impressive collection of true antiques. They could make a killing if they ever put this stuff up for sale. I know I'd try and buy a couple. If I could afford it.

I wonder if it'd be safe to still use these cookie cutters.

Here's a photo of Yuula on Santa's lap. This is as good as it's gonna get folks. She freaked out immediately after this was taken. But it was cool because she really had some fun in the rest of Santa's workshop. It was exactly how I pictured it should be all these years. I remember walking in and saying "Yup, this looks about right".

One of my personal favorites was Tudor Towne, a walk-through animated storybook village that tells the story of Santa's first visit. The whole place is lined with cobblestone and animal families celebrating the holiday in extreme detail. It truly is one of the most impressive things I've ever seen. I may have stayed there a little longer than the average visitor. 

I may have taken more than my fair share of photos in Tudor Towne.

Since we were in Lancaster it seemed only fitting to have a section solely for their Christmas traditions, which surprise surprise, does include Belschnickel. I thought Dwight made it up.

I think the trains were Yuula's (and my Dad's) favorite part. It was the most impressive setup I'd ever seen, and I think the only setup Yuula has ever seen so... 

Looks like we need to get some trains under our tree soon.

I want this.

Towards the end they have different versions of manger scenes depicted by each country followed by a big ol' diorama of the city of Bethlehem. That was pretty impressive. And the viewing pews was a nice touch, even if they only provided a jungle gym for Yuula. 

Pretty awesome place. We may have created a new tradition.

For Now She'll Love Him From Afar

We all have one of these don't we? I know I have a couple. Ages 2, 3 and 17. I thought tonight would be an appropriate night to throw this one up tho. With Santa coming and all. Now when he gets here he can go "Ohhhhh. That girl."

While I was scanning this in I skimmed thru some of the goodies from the goodie bag that came along with our $30 photo. A coloring book, some ads and 3D Santa glasses. I had to check that out.

This is how Santa will see our tree when he gets here tonight wearing his 3D Santa glasses...



He must be getting bored.

A Lil' Holiday Weird

I Am Not Alone In This

Christmas City Out-takes

Here's some more of the photos from the flashgun session we spent on the city streets on Monday. We are proud of how well handled the craziness and the lights were a real distraction, but when it hit 9pm we sprinted down Broadway to the parking garage, but not fast enough to keep Yuula from assaulting a women on the move. "That baby just hit me!" was what she said.