John's work for their company party bought us all tickets to the zoo lights and rented a room for a party there. It was fun to have another fun way to see the lights and celebrate christmas without having to spend money.
These pictures are not in order so ignore that please. Anyway, the only problem with this great night was the actual night it fell on. It was the weekend of a scout campout, a huge soccer tournament that I helped run and the boys all reffed in, and the ward Christmas Party. We talked one day and gave a few choices to the kids knowing we couldn't do it all without going crazy. Since the boys knew Christmas would be small they preferred to make what money they could instead of running from one party to leave early and get there late to the other party. It made it a much less stressful day for me also so as much as I love and was sad to miss the ward party, I wasn't sad to miss the stress it would have added.
Matthew also really wanted to go on the campout to the Mormon Battalion hike so he wanted as much time as he could reffing late in the day on Saturday so he could have Christmas money. The boys have found they can really earn great money being soccer ref's. They were able to buy nice presents for everyone but I'll talk about that more in another post. We left the soccer field and went straight to the zoo. The kids however did not listen to instructions well and the boys did not have coats/jackets etc. We had quite the assortment of odd attire to warm my family as we walked around the zoo lights.
We went into the party part first where the kids sat on Santas lap. Again that is a wonderful part of all this. Seeing santa with no line and no cost on the picture. (They have to be scanned though so at this point no visible proof of that). Ellie started crying when Matthew tried to take her up to Santa. So while the kids and john went about finding lots of tasty food including but not limited to a tasty pumpkin desert, I worked with Ellie. We watched other kids take their turns. We talked about how he had a beard and white hair. We came to the conclussion that he was just a grandpa. After that she went up with me, told him she wanted a baby doll...the presented my own fears as that had not been bought for her. But she from that point on just talked about Santa Grandpa whenever she saw a picture or anything of him.
They had craft stuff the kids could decorate a frame to have their picture with Santa attached to. Matthew bowed out of most of the fun after Santa not because he is too old and cool to do it all, but because he spilled an entire cup of hot chocolate all down his shirt and pants and tried to hide as much of his body under the table as he could so as not to embarrass John around the people he works with.
Rachel went to check out the face painting and got what she still believes is a Christmas Bear on her head...yep no one else agrees that that was actually what she got but there is no convincing her. Ellie wanted to go up and get her face done too. Knowing what a trick it had been to see Santa I wasn't sure how she'd do getting her face painted. By the way, Harrison opted out of that as he'd just have to wash it off before church tomorrow and it wasn't worth the work. Anyway, Ellie and I looked at lots of options small things like Hello Kitty and such but when she saw the tiger face it's all she wanted. You couldn't convince her of anything else. It was her turn and she showed the lady what she wanted. The lady asked her, "You want to be a cute tiger?" Her response was quick and never varied since, "No!! A MEAN tiger!!!" So that's what she became. She sat completely still with her eyes closed the entire time her face was transformed. I don't know that I have ever seen her sit so still in her life. She had her look at herself in the mirror and you couldn't tell if she liked it or not. There was no reaction. It wasn't until by daddy that she would smile about it but when anyone stopped to see "how cute she was" she would do her "mean tiger face" to show them she was mean not cute. Yep, we all thought it was super cute when she looked mean, I guess we are just mean that way.
After we ate we went out and saw an Owl up close and then walked around seeing the lights. There were some really pretty ones but the family favorite was the "dancing trees" set to Carol of the Bells which is Harrison's favorite song. We sat there three times through it before we got up and finished the lights and went home exhausted.
All four kids were sound asleep by the time we arrived home that night but it was a wonderful weekend that all enjoyed. Thanks Fender for a great time!
No comments:
Post a Comment