Weekend of Holiday Fun!

What a fun holiday weekend we had! We celebrated the holidays and the Holly-days. :)

Saturday we had Bake Day at Wade's cousin, Kelli's, house. Bake Day is a fun holiday tradition on the Carpenter/Ylda side of our family. All of the girls on that side of the family get together and bake our little hearts out. When its all said and done, we split up all of the Christmas cookies and yummy baked goods and we all get an assortment of treats to take home. Then we share them with family members, friends, neighbors, etc. It is always a fun time! This year I didn't take a single picture though. :( You'll have to just take my word for it, we had fun!

On Saturday night, we celebrated the Holly-Day!!! My sweet pal, Holly, is a Christmas baby. Her 30th birthday is on December 25th! Her hubby has been scheming to plan a fun way to celebrate. So... after lots of lies and deception we surprised our birthday girl with a party at the Gaylord Texan in Grapevine. We went to the ICE exhibit and then had cake and gifts on the patio overlooking all of the Christmas decorations. I think that Holly was surprised, and that she really enjoyed her party. :) The Gaylord was decorated so beautifully! I have never seen so many gorgeous Christmas decorations in one place. It was amazing!
The ICE exhibit was really neat also! The theme this year was How the Grinch Stole Christmas. They had various parts of the story carved out of ice. I found myself constantly amazed by the artistry that went into the exhibit. Seriously, amazing! It was really cold in there (9 degrees, to be exact!), but they provided parkas that kept us warm. :)

Do we look like eskimos or what? Ha!

Wade went down the slide luge style. :)

The Nativity was my favorite part. It was so beautiful!

Happy 30th, Holly!!! We love you!

On Sunday afternoon, we took the kids to Six Flags for Holiday in the Park. We had bought passes this summer, so we figured that we may as well use them one last time. Wade and I both have fond childhood memories of Holiday in the Park, so we thought that it would be fun for Clayton. However, it was really crowded! We still had fun, though.

Clayton sledding down Frosty's Snow Hill. He loved it! He really wanted to go again, but we weren't about to stand in the 45 minute long line again. So, it was a one hit wonder. ;)

Drew kept himself busy in line by playing LOTS of peek-a-boo....

and trying on Daddy's hat.

I didn't figure that the Six Flags Santa would be that great, so I didn't put the kids in cute outfits. I was so wrong! The Santa was one of the best that I've ever seen. He was so sweet with the kids and looked amazing. So, even though the kids aren't dressed their best, I still got some cute pictures.

Santa snuggled with Drew for several minutes. It was sweet to watch. :)

Mrs. Claus was there, too. She read the boys a story about one of the elves.

By 7:45, the boys were soooo tired. They were cranky and fussy and just plain DONE! The only thing that we hadn't done yet was "Reindeer Landing." I asked one of the employees a few questions to see if it was worth our time. He said that they parade the reindeer around the stage and then you get to take your picture with them. I was under the impression that they were real live reindeer. So, I was pretty determined to wait the 30 minutes until the next show. Well, we waited in the cold for a half hour with cranky babies so that we could see the real reindeer. The whole time I was pumping it up to Clayton that they were the real deer that pull Santa's sleigh, and that we were going to get to pet them. Wade was less than thrilled with waiting, but he was a trooper.

Well, at 8:15 we were all set to see the real reindeer. Out come all of these characters dressed in goofy reindeer costumes. Wade looked at me with a totally irritated gleam in his eye and said, "you've gotta be kidding me!" Ooops - my bad! Ha ha! Oh well, they were still cute...

Wade was not happy with me at this point.

Clayton still thought they were fun!

It was a super fun weekend! (Even if we didn't see real reindeer... :) )