Tis the Season

I was able to go to Jacob's kindergarten class and help with gingerbread houses (or more like milk carton houses). They had a TON of candy  so the houses were covered with sugar.

This year we had a ward party with a dinner and a program. The whole primary sang Jingle Bells. We were excited to have our neighbor's the Hess' come with us.

I'm not sure if Danny sang at all or just shook his bell the whole time.

Christmas was on Sunday this year. Since we didn't go home to Utah, we decided to go up to Duluth for 2 nights. We stayed in a hotel that had a water park in it. They also had lots of games that we could check out from the front desk. Andrew and Jacob loved playing Life with Dad.

I played Cooties and Memory with Danny. He LOVED Cooties!

The first night we were there we went down town to the Bentlyville Tour of Lights. It was AMAZING!

We drove down to the park and then walked around looking at all the light displays.

In one area there was free hot chocolate and cookies for everyone.

There was holiday music playing.

In another area there were fires to roast marshmallow.

Santa was there. We had to wait in line for quite a while to see him, but it was well worth it. He told the boys to clean their room before he came on Christmas morning. They also each got a new hat and it had a bag of cookies in it.

There was also an area with bags of popcorn for everyone.

There was an ice skating area. We watched people skate and the boys walked on the ice.

We had SO MUCH fun! I hope we are able to do this again next year.

On Friday we got up in the morning and had a huge breakfast at the hotel and then went and played in the water park. Nathan and I sat in a tube and went around and around the lazy river. It was so relaxing to have him just lay on me as we floated on the water.

Doug took the boys on the water slides.

Then we went back to our room and took naps and then went swimming again that evening.

We had a wonderful vacation. It was fun to play in the water even though there was snow outside. We all agree that this should become a yearly tradition!