Holiday excursion catch-up

We were blessed with some amazing family time over the holidays, as Brian had vacation time off from work for 2 1/2 weeks. We really cherished this time together, as the reality of the era of our little 3 person family unit is soon coming to an end.

We are currently eagerly awaiting our new addition and are excited to see how Guthrie handles being a big brother. He's been particularly intrigued with babies lately and likes pointing out all the baby stuff that has emerged back into the household.

One recurring activity for us over the holidays was making the short trip downtown to see all the lights and the featured "show" for kids: the Leonard Bearstein Symphony Orchestra. Think Chuck E. Cheese performance on holiday crack. Guthrie loved it! I think we ended up visiting the singing and instrument-playing bears 3 or 4 times. The pictures below are from 2 different visits.

This is awesome, mom!

Trying to climb the fence to get to the bears.
This is my favorite shot: check out his hair in the air- G was bouncing up and down for about 10 minutes straight!
Then rocking back and forth dancing.

On another visit closer to Christmas. School was out, so lots more kids were there. Guthrie looked so little next to the bigger kids. He tried for some time to fight his way into the fence line, to no avail, so he headed to another area of the hall.
Not a bad view from over here.


Finally- busting into the front!
On this particular trip, we also tacked on some time to walk around town a good bit. We stopped by the Bechtler Museum, a brand spankin- new modern art museum in Charlotte that just opened on the 2nd of January (we went to the opening- it was insanely crowded, but totally fun to be a part of!). We just really like the building itself and couldn't help but snap a few shots outside it even though it wasn't open yet at the time.
The Firebird sculpture outside the Bechtler.
While most of the public transit in Charlotte centers around buses, we do have a north/south running commuter light rail system. We often walk along the lines when downtown so G can catch glimpses of the trains. This day we decided to take a little excursion on the rails, just for fun. Since it's basically a commuter rail, there's not much to visit on the stops, aside from some retail and housing. So, our destination was the glorious Chick-Fil-A, several stops out of town! Too exciting!

Guthrie and Dada buying tickets at one of the downtown stops.
"OOOOOOOOO-oooo-WOOOOOO!" Here comes the train!