Christmas 2017

We hosted Christmas at our house this year! Being the first Christmas at the farm house, we tried to make things extra special! During advent, the time leading up to Christmas, I did my traditional books wrapped under the tree. This year I included Christmas crafts and planned on watching some movies throughout the season. We talked about Jesus' birth and the real reason for the season. The kids had a lot of fun. We baked cookies and decorated them. I still have our gingerbread houses we need to do and hopefully we'll get to that soon.

There were 25 at our house on Christmas Day. It was cold, so we kept everyone inside. We connected 5-6 tables and made one really long table. We served our Christmas dinner buffet style and it turned out great! Everyone had a nice time.

The kids got way too many toys from us this year. But we really don't buy much during the year and I wanted to make sure they got everything they wanted this year. Their favorites were: Caden - new Kindle and Mouse Trap game; Grace - tree house and dolls; Jackson - Thomas the Train up and down roller coaster.

On New Years Eve we ate at home and the kids went to bed early. Collin and I both got sick after Christmas and weren't feeling very well. On New Year's Day, we took the kids to get Hibachi and watch the talented chef cook our food in front of us. We didn't do much else. 

I hope you and your family had a wonderful Christmas and a great 2018!

Gaylord ICE Exhibit

It's been a few years since we visited the Gaylord ICE exhibit at the Gaylord Texan. We decided to add that to our fun things to do getting ready for Christmas. We have a number of Christmas traditions we like to do as a family. This year, we also decided to stay in Grapevine. We were going to stay at the Gaylord Texan, but sadly they are unable to accommodate a family of 5. So we stayed at the Embassy Suites five minutes from the Gaylord. We stayed the day after Thanksgiving and spent Saturday at the Gaylord. We adding ice sledding and snowball throwing to the list and the kids loved sliding down the ice the most. The ice exhibit was nice but very cold. I forgot to bring my kids hats and gloves so they were freezing. Mom fail. This year's theme was Santa Claus is Coming to Town. The Ice exhibit is fun to do every 2-3 years but not something we'd do every year. I think next year we're going to try and take the kids snowskiing. We will see.

Here are some pictures from the ICE.