Christmas Time, Oh Yeah!

We had a wonderful time during our Christmas Holidays!

First we went with Gary's family to Grapevine, TX to ride the North Pole Express, a train ride with all kinds of Christmas goodies, and to ICE!, a sculpted ice exhibit. It was an awesome time since we got to spend the night at a hotel to visit with family and play BINGO and win some cool prizes.

Chance & Bryce really enjoyed bring with Andrew as well as the rest of the family.

We also went to Main Street and they had free horse drawn carriages with free kettle corn popcorn which was delicious. They had all these kiosks filled with animated characters like elves, beavers, carolers and Santa!!

Joanna & Bryce stopped to pose with Frosty & an elf who were freezing in the cold!

That night, we went to ride the North Pole Express, a train, which was supposed to be a close experience to the movie...at least for kids. All I know is that the benches were hurting my butt, Andrew was screaming his head off, and the PA system they had was really old and I couldn't hear what they were saying overhead. Other than that, they decorated inside the train really pretty.

The conductor came by and punched everybody's ticket, unfortunately I had lost my ticket in all the commotion of wrapping everybody in thick coats and blankets and keeping Andrew happy.

Santa also came by and took a picture with Andrew, who was crying, but I'm not sure who took the picture...so I can't show it to you, bummer!

The next day, we woke up early to go to the Gaylord Texan Hotel...and to our amazement, that place was so gigantic it was unbelievable! It was so pretty and nice! No wonder it's expensive to stay there... ha!

It's this ginormous atrium that was about 80 degrees Farenheit in there, but it seemed like it should be cold...hmm. So after we had unwrapped ourselves from all our coats and gloves, we took some pictures.

They had EVERYTHING decorated! HUGE snowmen, Santa's, tiny trains, reindeer, lights, presents, gingerbread houses, anything you can think of, it was there.

Giant Gingerbread House...

Giant cowboy Santa with presents.

ICE! was so cool! I was so impressed by everything. It was all a dark background with bright, beautiful lights shinning, glitter and ice everywhere...

Inside ICE! it was about 7 degrees...so they gave you parkas to keep warm. We all felt like blue blimps. Your face was so cold, but the rest of you was warm.

Gary & his mom Elita.

I wish I could post all of the pictures of the sculptures on here, but Blogger has a weird way of uploading the pictures, so I'll just post a few that are my favorites.

These bunnies were about 1 ft tall. Sculptures were all sizes..from the tiniest 5 inch lollipop to a 6 ft. arch angel.

There was an awesome ice slide where people could go down on their butts. You can hardly tell it's Gary in the picture below, but he waited in line about 15 minutes behind all these little kids to go down the slide. Of course I was at the end of it, with my camera ready to take a picture but since we're all in blue parkas I took a couple of pictures of people I didn't know, and I did all of this waiting while I was holding Andrew. The poor thing buried his face into my chest and fell asleep while waiting for Daddy to go down the slide. His nose was warm. My finger was frozen stiff in the position of pushing the button on the camera to take Daddy's snapshot. Ha!

After ICE! was over, we all went home and came back to Gary's parents house in Star, TX to have Christmas. Chance & Bryce got some good presents, and Andrew did too!

The Witty's: (l to r) Lynet, Gary, Elita, Jimmy holding Andrew, Chance, Joanna, Damien holding Bryce.

Andrew in his carrier seat after ICE! He was all smiles!