Jenna Bush Hager and Hoda Kotb were discussing their family Christmas traditions on Today when Bush Hager shared a hilarious story about her father, former POTUS George W. Bush.
The Today host was explaining that she and her family usually go back to Texas to spend the holidays with her parents, which offered a much-needed reprieve from the city life when they still lived in New York City.
“This is what we’ve done since before my kids were born. I mean, almost [every year] except for the pandemic year, so Mila has had 10 christmases with my family,” she told Kotb, adding that they usually spend most of their time “outdoors.”
“Especially when we lived here in the city, it was so good for my kids because they didn’t know,” she continued. “Like I remember when Mila was 2, she kept saying, ‘No buggy! No buggy!’ Because she couldn’t believe it, she had never seen a bug before.”
Bush Hager then added, “My dad was like, ‘Oh Jenna, you’re gonna need to get her outdoors.”
Bush Hager recently brought her daughter back to the White House for a holiday party, where they got to meet some of the staff members who worked in the White House when her father was president, from 2001 to 2009.
Joined by Today‘s Savannah Guthrie and Sheinelle Jones, and their kids, Bush Hager told Kotb on a recent episode that they all got a chance to catch up in the kitchen, where she said they shared “really beautiful moment.”
“I walked in the kitchen and I brought Mila, and Savannah and Vale, and Sheinelle and her son, and we went in and they were like, ‘How’s your dad? What’s happening? And they told all these funny stories,” she said.
She added, “People are like, ‘Does Mila even get it?’ And I’m like, I don’t know, but I love that that’s who she met. She met the people who meant the most to us, and they weren’t the fancy reporters that were outside in sparkly dresses. They were the people who made that house a home. It was so awesome to see them again.”
Today with Hoda & Jenna airs on weekdays at 10/9c on NBC.