The Dancing Lights of Christmas

During this Christmas season, Nathan and I discovered a new holiday jewel! Sure, its not necessarily a brand new thing, but I had no idea it existed until this year! Its like the videos you see online of people to deck out their houses with twinkling lights and program them to a Christmas tune.

The Dancing Lights of Christmas are located in Nashville's Jellystone Park. I heard an advertisement for the twinkling light show on the radio, and decided we should go for a fun night out. As the ad mentioned that it was perfect for kids and pets, we decided to invite Koba to join us in the new adventure. We all loved it!

Why I would recommend seeing the Dancing Lights of Christmas:

• It's festive..... I mean, really, who doesn't love Christmas lights and Christmas songs?...
• It's cheap..... only $25 per car-load, so pack 'em in!
• It's family friendly..... this is great for adults, youth, kids, or pets!
• It's entertaining...... because you drive through the park twinkling in tandem with 7-8 Christmas songs, you could get a different show every time you go through!

We have now visited Jellystone Park to see the Dancing Lights of Christmas twice this season, and I would recommend this to everyone in the Nashville area. I only caution you that you will not be the only visitors.... the second time we went, we had to wait in a car line for quite a while, so it would be a good idea to plan for that.

I hope everyone is enjoying the Christmas lights whereever you are this Christmas. What are some other good Christmas activities we should try next? Leave a comment below.

The Best and Worst Christmas Movies

If you have known me for a while, you know that I collect Christmas movies. Every year, I host a "Three-Week Christmas Movie Marathon Extravaganza." Needless to say, I watch most of the Christmas movies I own once (if not twice or three) times a year. Over the years, I have grown to love most of them and enjoy almost every night of the Marathon Extravaganza.

Here are my Top 5 Favorite Christmas Movies:

Spoiler Alert!

5. Home Alone: There are several reasons I love Home Alone. First, is that it is very....Christmasy. I appreciate the Christmas movies that are committed to being Christmas movies and not just a movie that happens to happen on Christmas. So, in Home Alone, there is snow, Christmas decor, and other Christmas movie references. Kevin is also almost always seen wearing festive clothing. Another reason Home Alone is ranked is because of all of the hilarious references that almost everyone who's seen the movie understands. Although, I usually don't like slapstick comedy, it is admittedly pretty hilarious to see the idiot bad guys get their heads caught on fire, and nails go through their feet, and irons fall on their faces, and fall down flights of stairs...

4. The Family Stone: This movie may not be on your personal top Christmas movies list, but just hear me out. Not only does it have a great cast, the characters portrayed are so well-developed. You've got the classic territorial mom, the understanding dad, the perfect son, and the new uptight girlfriend who doesn't fit in. Add in several other siblings, all with a list of character flaws, and it makes for a pretty entertaining movie! A bigger reason The Family Stone is fourth on my list is all of the raw emotion. Throughout the movie, you feel what the characters feel, whether its happiness, appreciation, spite, or sorrow. Additionally, Rachel McAdams is arguably my favorite actress, so that just makes me like it more. There, I said it.

3. The Polar Express: I'm not exactly sure why I like The Polar Express so much. Could it be the singing? Could it be Tom Hanks? Could it be the fact that it is an off-the-beaten-path type of Christmas movie? Probably all of the above. Or it might just be that it would be freakin' awesome to have a train pull up to your doorstep and take you to the Polar Express. No, really, I honestly don't know why I like this movie so much. I love the association of being able to hear the bell and believing in Santa. Let's not even talk about how the small boy always makes me cry when he sings.

Ok, somebody fix me some hot chocolate.

2. National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation: People either love it, or they hate it. My parents watched this movie every year since I can remember. Whenever I was little, the only part I thought was funny was when Chevy Chase falls through the attic floor while he is watching old Christmas home videos and crying. Now as an adult and as a fairly quick-witted lady, I find most, if not all, of the scenes and quotes hilarious. I think this is one of those movies you have to watch several times before you can really appreciate it. So, those of you who have seen it once, you know what they say: "Don't knock it until you've tried it [five or more times*]."

*Quote additions added by me.

1. White Christmas: This is my favorite for 2 reasons.

1. We all know how I feel about musicals.
2. Bing Crosby's voice when he sings "White Christmas."

More like "I'm dreaming of a Bing Crosby"







As I mentioned, I honestly do love almost all of the Christmas movies that I own. There are, however, a few that I thoroughly dread to watch. Granted, I realize that there ARE some really badly-made TV Christmas movies out there, but I'm not referring to those types. I'm referring to Christmas movies that most people love and adore, but to be quite honest, get on my last nerve.  When Christmastime rolls around, I feel so torn; I feel an obligation to watch these along with the others that I like.

These are those movies, aka The Top 3 Most Annoying Christmas Movies:

3. Jingle All the Way: The story is ok. The kid is a brat. The dad is the Terminator. Sinbad is super annoying. The acting is TERRIBLE. I'm not going to lie, there are some parts that I like. I love the part where Arnold is naming off Santa's eight reindeer over and over in his Austrian accent. That is pretty darn funny.

2. Frosty the Snowman: Am I the only one who thinks Frosty is dumb? Not really Frosty as in the story, but Frosty as in the snowman. I appreciate the family-friendliness of the story, but Frosty is just too dense for me to really like him.

1. It's a Wonderful Life: My reasoning for disliking It's a Wonderful Life is kind of a dumb reason, and I realize that, but its my reasoning, none-the-less. It all started when I started collecting Christmas movies by this time in my life. It had been several years of my collection, and I still had not every seen It's a Wonderful Life. "Oh, you have to see it" they said. "Oh, its a classic" they said. So, finally, I got it and I watched it. All I can say is I'm not impressed. Maybe I got my hopes up for the Christmas movie of all Christmas movies. Maybe I though it was annoying because the majority of the movie isn't even on Christmas. Maybe I just randomly don't like it. For those of you who love it, to each his own. Its still a good movie, especially for 1946, its just not as good as everyone makes it out to be. Similarly to "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens, but thats a different post.


So, as you can see, its sort of hard for me to come up with reasons why I don't like these movies. Like I alluded, these aren't terrible movies, they just get on my nerves. So really this blog post should have been called "Ashley's Favorite Christmas Movies and the Ones that Annoy her the Most," but that's too long, I think we can all agree. What is your favorite Christmas movie and why? Leave a comment below.

Merry Christmas! Enjoy every Christmas movie like its your favorite Christmas movie!

Reasons why fall is the best, cont.

My top reasons why fall is the best...

• My birthday, and Ashley's birthday
• Thanksgiving
• Another chance for my fantasy football team
• Another change for my hockey teams (sigh....)
• Bon fires
• Cooler weather
• Better wardrobe choices
• Bears are more common in the fall...I think. Bears are cool. Unbearably. 

Click HERE to see Ashley's favorite things about fall.

Reasons Why Fall is the Best

I personally think that all of the seasons have their advantages and disadvantages. Some of them are little more unfortunate than others (I mean, who can really enjoy spring when it rains constantly, and you lose an hour during the time change halfway through), but they definitely all have pros and cons.

A few weeks ago, I asked Nathan to rank all of the months, while I did the same. To fulfill my spreadsheet fix for the day, I decided it would be a great use of time to document our results into a spreadsheet and accompanying graph. These are our results:

....in case you're wondering, this is how I came up with calculations. Each month was ranked in reverse order (the best month gets a 12, the worst month gets a 1). After averaging both of our answers, I created a graph with Nathan's answers, my answers, and our "combined" answers.

NOW...based on that info, I made up some random formula to discover that fall is the best season, with October being the best month. So, those are the facts.

Now, here are the opinions. Reasons Why Fall is the Best Season:

1. My birthday is in October and Nathan's birthday is in October.
2. The leaves are the best colors during fall.
3. The weather is decent most of the time during fall. Not too hot, not too cold.
4. Fall has the best seasonal flavors (pumpkin spice, apple cider, halloween candy).
5. Bonfires are the bomb diggity.

Click HERE to see Nathan's favorite things about fall.

Family Selfie

As some people may know, we recently got a knew kitten named Koba. He's generally pretty awesome, but thats not really the point of this particular post.

So, the other day, we decided it would be a great idea to take a family selfie of us and Koba. The result(s) turned out hilarious. Make sure you notice how Koba looks.... Nathan and I pretty much look the same in every picture.

Click HERE to watch a few clips of Koba when we first got him!

A Wicked Performance

Last night, we went to see Wicked the musical to celebrate. "Celebrate what?" you ask. Two things. Something old and something new. This Thursday will mark the 1 year anniversary of Nathan and I being together.... 4-17-13. Monday was the 2 month mark in the countdown to our wedding.... 6-14-14. Celebration it is! Thankfully, there were no Predators games this week... ;) So, we decided to go see the broadway musical, "Wicked," which was touring in Nashville at TPAC.

Wicked was the very first professional/semi-professional Broadway musical that I ever saw, which was in Chicago 6 years ago. Even after attending many other musicals, both professional/semi-professional, as well as community theatre productions, Wicked is still my favorite. I, by no means, am a musical theatre "expert," but I could, in some circles be considered a musical theatre "buff." So, let's just pretend that assumption is correct. These are the reasons that Wicked is the best musical that I have yet to see...

1. It's easy to follow. This is important, because sometimes you may want to go see a theatre production with someone who doesn't really like theatre that much (to those people, I'll say, you are definitely missing out...). If you do decide to see a play with someone who isn't into the arts, or who isn't quite nerdy enough, or who gets bored easily, Wicked might be a good place to start. Since it's based off of the storyline of the Wizard of Oz, there are a lot of aspects that are easy to catch on to.
2. Wicked is surprisingly funny to audiences who think theatre is boring. I am extremely familiar with the Wicked soundtrack, and though I had seen it before, I had forgotten how many hilarious one-liners are included in the script!
3. The music is AMAZING. That's all I really have to say about that. If you want to make me cry, sing me some good harmony.
4. Although there are no children characters, Wicked is very family friendly. I could have missed it, but I noticed there was absolutely no language, no nudity, and no sexual content. So, as far as taking your kids to see it? I say, go for it. If you can get past the fact that the whole plot line is about witches, then I would say it would be a great choice for a family date. Now... if you can't get over the whole magic thing.... don't even get me started... thats a completely different blog post.

Basically, I think everyone should see Wicked at least once, if not 40 times. But I would suggest anyone see any Broadway musical, because I've loved every one I've seen thus far.

The First Post

Welcome to the mystical myriad of musings from Nathan Koehler and Ash Birdwell. I wanted to start this blog to tell the world about the things that are going on in life and the various topics of which we are interested in! Prepare yourself, because I may make you think more than a college student on a cold Tuesday Morning!