Christmas Ups and Downs

I missed my blog-a-week minimum again, and I sincerely apologize to my two faithful blog readers! I have been busy with all of the hustle and bustle of Christmastime.  I will try and catch you up on a few of the fun things we have been doing.

First, on the weekend after Thanksgiving, we tried something new and headed up to the land of Og.  My dad and sister were running in a "Santa Fun Run" there, which is where everyone in the race dresses up like Santa and the runs a 5k.  After the race, there was going to be a "Holiday Lights Parade" and then some fireworks as they turned on the lights to their Christmas Village there.  Sounds fun!  We didn't make it up there in time to see the race, but we saw plenty of sweaty post-race Santas on our way to the parade. We found our spot and settled in to watch.  Dax was just a little excited:

The parade was pretty fun!  There were quite a few floats, all decked out in Christmas lights.  There were firetrucks with lights, boats with lights, motorcycles with lights, and jeeps with lights:

Then at the end of the parade was the big man himself, Santa Claus!

After the parade ended, we walked up the street to view the fireworks.  The kids had a great time riding around on everyone's shoulders, pretending that whoever they were riding on was a horse and trying to get them to chase each other around.  There was lots of yelling and giggling and pretty much making a spectacle of ourselves:

Then, fireworks in November!  Quite an unusual sight:

The next weekend, we thought it MIGHT be fun to take the kids to the festival of trees.  I remember going as a kid and thinking it was really boring.  I wasn't sure if the kids would like it, but I read that there were fresh cinnamon rolls and fudge, so I knew it couldn't be all bad.  First, we checked out the gingerbread houses. 

They were amazing!  There was gingerbread Hogwarts, a gingerbread Dr. Suess house, gingerbread churches (like the one behind Dax), gingerbread birdhouses, and even gingerbread lighthouses. 

We looked at a few trees, but all that gingerbread and candy had made us hungry, so before long we were sampling the fresh sweet rolls with chocolate milk.  There were so many beautiful trees, Cora especially loved the "Pinkalicious" tree:

Arden kept whining to go over and do some crafts by the door (that costed extra $$$).  We told her that we weren't going to do the crafts since we had lots of crafts at home, but she wouldn't give it up.  I got a little tired of hearing about the crafts over and over and over, so I made her pose by this Grinch tree :-):  She is even pulling an appropriate face!

After the trees started to blur together, we took in some quality entertainment!  These are the "Clogging Grannies," and they were awesome. I soooo want to join this group when I am a granny.  Arden asked if she could have a jacket like theirs for Christmas because they were "so shiny!":

Earlier this week, we thought we would follow up all the Santas and Christmas trees with a little something to help us remember the real meaning behind Christmas.  Up in Layton they do a "Journey to Bethlehem" at one of the churches, where people dress up in costumes from Jesus' time, and take tours around showing scenes from the Christmas story, complete with real live donkeys, camels and other animals.  We were so excited to show the kids this....until we saw the line.  It was LONG!  We waited in the line for about 20 minutes and it hadn't moved much at all.  The kids were getting restless.  We estimated that we would be in the line for about another hour.  It was already coming up on 7:30, so we threw in the towel.  The kids were disappointed to leave without seeing "da baby Jesus" but were satisfied when we told them we would stop at the Layton City park lights on the way home.  Here are the kids' favorite light figures.  Arden liked the unicorn:

Dax liked the (you guessed it) dinosaur:

 

(Mom! Do you see the green, glowing T-Rex behind me!  Can we have one in our yard?  Pleeease?  Because nothing says "Christmas" like a gigantic, light up T-Rex!"

Cora liked them all!

So, we started out the evening hoping to see our children reverently looking at a nativity scene, but ended up with giggles in front of pink unicorns and dinosaurs.  Fail.

Well, that is all the fun I can squeeze into this post.  Hopefully there will be much more to come!  And in less than a week from now ;-)