Christmas Eve

Aunt Jessie and Uncle Craig had us all over for a tamale dinner on Christmas Eve. Somehow I only ended up with a picture of Jess's pretty table but I know Gail took tons of good pictures that night so I will have to revisit this night when I get the pictures from her.

When we got home we put out some goodies for Santa. Yes, at our house Santa gets a beer and some cookies because he's so tired of drinking all that milk at everyone else's houses and hauling all those presents, he's in need of an adult, Texas beverage by the time he hits our house. No worries, it's not enough to put him over the legal limit. ;)

And thank goodness Santa still came to our house because when I wasn't looking Grant ate one of his cookies. When I asked Grant what happened to Santa's cookie he announced proudly that "Grant ate it."

And in the interest of full disclosure, Dakota ate the other cookie when I wasn't looking. Thankfully Santa was happy with just a cold brewsky!

Christmas Eve ICE

We got up on Christmas Eve and met Gigi and Gip over at the Gaylord Texan for an early morning trek through the arctic. Or the ICE exhibit. Whatever. Same difference. It was 12 degrees in there!

We donned our big blue parkas and headed in to see larger than life ice sculptures of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and the whole gang. The Charlie Brown theme was very cute this year and of course they had the big ice slide but you have to be 40 inches to ride it and unfortunately Grant is not quite there yet. And let's face it, I'm only barely tall enough. :)












I'm not quite sure Grant understood why it was so cold in there or that everything in there was made of ice (It really is incredible what they can do with frozen water.) but he seemed to have a good time anyway. The last room you go in always has a gigantic nativity scene carved out of ice of course and Christmas carols playing. I think that was the biggest hit... the music. Grant had his own dance party right there in his way-too-big blue parka in front of baby Jesus himself. ;)

Ho, Ho, Ho

We found this guy just hanging out on Main Street. (Santa that is, not Grant.)

Just Hear Those Sleigh Bells Jingling...

Ok so maybe it was a wagon and not a sleigh and maybe there weren't any actual bells but we were being pulled by a horse and looking at some awesome Christmas lights. Mom and Dad treated us all to a horse-drawn wagon to check out all the lights in the Park Cities neighborhoods this year. Grant loved it and was totally taken with Remington, our very huge, very strong horse. :)







Thanks for a fun night, Mom and Dad!

Santa's Village

Grapevine, a.k.a. The Christmas Capitol of Texas (Seriously, that's what they claim and with good reason.) has a Santa's village set up on Main Street. So while daddy finished visiting with cousin Katie and her friend over breakfast at the Main Street Bakery (How did we not get a picture, Katie?!?!?!) I took Grant down the street to see the Santa's Village. It was pretty cute and Grant made sure all the penguins and polar bears felt well loved by kissing each of them. :)

Santa

Mom and I made our annual trek to the downtown Neiman Marcus store to see the Christmas decorations and to take Grant to see Santa. Neiman's always does an outrageously creative Christmas theme and this year was no different. In fact the tree was actually a space ship this year!

We checked out Santa's throne before he arrived...




Of course we had to go upstairs to the children's area to check out all the cool toys...


The box house....Seriously he loved this and how easy would it be to make your own!!!




The pink piano....




The fireman hat....




The big moment arrived. I asked Grant if he wanted to go talk to Santa and he said, "Yep!" and proceeded to run up to Santa and hold up his arms for Santa to pick him up. (Santa was eating this up because the 6 kids before us were all screaming, crying, messes.) Santa asked Grant what he wanted for Christmas and Grant named a couple of things: a yellow school bus, a purple watch, and Elmo before he told Santa all about what he'd done that day. It was pretty stinkin' cute. I wished I had the video camera with me. Who knew my kid was going to run into the arms of a strange, white bearded man with a red suit so happily?!?!



We had a blast as usual! Until next year...