Tom: This weekend is about travel for the holidays, like so many others! Friday night will find me frantically running through Union Market getting last minute gifts for the whole family. Assuming I haven’t blown all my money at Salt & Sundry, we’ll drive up to Pittsburgh to spend time with Tiffany’s family. I’ll be dreaming of skating down at the Sculpture Gallery or Canal Park rinks, some hot cocoa from Co Co. Sala, and the National Christmas Tree. May all of the joy of this season be with you all this week.

Rachel: This weekend, while everyone’s traveling or prepping for Christmas, I’ll be either working on music or watching/hearing live music. Friday night, I’ll be at the Hard Rock Cafe for the Pink Jams! Annual Holiday Celebration. The evening features the dating music duo Far Away, the Winner of the 2012 Hard Rock Rising DC band battle Gallons to Ounces and talented 12-13 year old musicians The Boxx. Then Saturday, I’m hoping to catch Taylor Carson at the 9:30 Club opening for Virginia Coalition. Now if only I could figure out what will be open on Monday and Tuesday, then I can try to extend this fun into a long weekend with a chance of ice skating at the Sculpture Garden!

Patrick: Like many other locals I will be hitting the roads for the holidays but for those staying in town I cannot recommend enough the latest two shows I reviewed. The Pajama Men is an excellent comedy option that you will not regret. Also if you want to get revved up for Jackman, Hathaway, and company in the upcoming Les Mis film, go see the stage version now playing at the National Theatre. While I’m shamelessly promoting posts I wrote this week, another great option is to check out the Bond Villain exhibit at the Spy Museum. I’ll leave y’all with this, if you are Oscar watching these next few weeks (and I know I am) here’s the top 5 films you need to see: Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty, Les Miserables, Silver Linings Playbook, Life of Pi.

Don: Cue the start of tedious baby-related weekend plans from me! My darling wife and I just returned from California with our newly-adopted baby boy. So we’ll largely be in hunker-down unwrap-all-the-needed-accouterments oh-crap-do-we-need-to-start-college-acceptance-papers-yet mode. But the holiday prep waits for no man, woman, child, or wee little baby. So we’ll likely strap the lil’ tyke to our chest and head down to the Downtown Holiday Market, maybe walk around the Portrait Gallery while we’re there. If we’re there at the right time the talk about Jim Henson would be interesting.

Fedward: After a huge deadline push at work this five day weekend couldn’t come soon enough for me.  I plan to stock up on Christmas spirit with visits to the National Gallery of Art’s Sculpture Garden Ice Rink, the Capitol Christmas Tree, and the National Christmas Tree. Maybe this year we’ll finally make it to ZooLights, too. Saturday I might also be rounded up for some spontaneous caroling. Monday night we’re going first to Proof for nog and glogg, then to the Passenger for, well, the Passenger. Tuesday we’ll spend Christmas with local family, and Wednesday we’ll recover from the previous two days by doing not much of anything.