Holiday Happenings

When we got our season passes for Silver Dollar City last Christmas (my mom gets all the kids and their families passes each year) one of the first things I wanted to do was to plan a trip to see the lights there! I looked at our calendar back in October and we figured out that the weekend before Christmas was the only chance we would have this year! So, as soon as Noah got out of school (we had to stay for his Christmas party) and Nathan got off work we took off for a little mini vacation!

Cutest Little Rudolf :)

Noah and his amazing teacher!

We went to Short Smalls (my favorite) for dinner! The kids love riding the "Wooo Pig Sooie" there too :)

Then we went to the hotel to swim - Ryans favorite part of the trip by far - that girl loves hotels!

The next morning the kids got up early, so we ended up shopping at about 8:30. The parking lots were pretty empty and the lines were short. We had no idea that was only because we were there so early. Some of the store employees told us that was by far the busiest weekend of the year, way worse than Black Friday! When we left that mall for lunch it was packed! So crazy what a few hours difference made! We then went to lunch at Joe's Crab Shack (Nathan's Favorite) and went to a few stores before heading towards Silver Dollar City.

They got to paint their own rice crispy crabs - it was so cute!

Way, and I mean WAY, before the entrance the traffic started. If we waited in that line we would not get there for at least 3 hours! So, I decided to use the right lane to pass all those people and go towards Branson West and then just turn around and come from the other direction where the traffic wasn't as bad - and it worked! It still took us an hour to get in the park, but we passed miles and miles of cars! They had to park up at a campground past the park because all of the lots on the property were full! This didn't look good! But, we didn't have to wait for a shuttle or to get in and barely had to wait in line for food.

Now it was time for the Chrismas tree lighting and parade we had heard so much about! The tree show was very cool! However, it repeats about every 10 minutes, so next time I will not stress about getting there for the actual start of it :) We had seen pictures of the parade and heard about how good it was so we were excited and waited in a good spot to watch it. Well, it only had 7 floats and was about 5 minutes long! The kids were fine with it, but Nathan and I were disappointed. I think the trouble we went through to get there for that has something to do with our disappointment though. Next year, we will just skip that part :)

We wanted to go to church the next morning and we had a Christmas party so we left after the parade for home. My mom's family party finally got so big we had to rent a building for her Christmas party! The location has a park though so the kids loved it. Santa came again this year and the kids were so excited!

Now, just a few work days left and then Christmas! I have a feeling it will be extra special this year - the kids are really in to it :)