"So, This is Christmas"

Before Christmas Day arrived, we were able to squeeze in a few other activities--some that will be repeated, some that will not!  We'll let you guess which one of these two adventures was the hit and which one was the absolute bomb...

Hylie was a great helper when it came to making Christmas cookies.  She helped Mom roll out the dough, use the cookie cutters, and finally--decorate with sprinkles!

I think it's safe to say, cookies are a hit with this girl!

The Monday before Christmas, Geoff and I decided to check out a light show that was highly rated  and recommended.  It was located 30 minutes north of us, so it was a bit of a haul, but the admission was only $5 and the reviews said if you go on a weeknight, you miss the crowds.

Lies.  All lies.

We had hopes of arriving to the light display at 6:00, but we're finding that when you have a toddler and a nursing infant--you can throw any and all schedules out the window.  We got to the place at 7:30 but didn't figure out where the END of the line was until 8:00.  There were SO many cars, it was crazy.  Geoff and I looked at each other, both wanting to just call it a night, but the entire car ride, we were building up Hylie with what a great trip this was going to be and how fun it would be to see the light show.  When we got in line she kept asking where the show was.  We told her we had to wait a long time to take our turn...so then the next 20 minutes she kept asking if it was our turn yet.  Once we were in line, we realized it would be pretty tricky to pull out of line--so we were pretty committed.

Being that it was past bedtime, Hylie started fading, so we did what any desperate parent would do: fed her candy.  We had two small packets of Sixlets that we gave her.  The car was getting really stuffy from sitting there with the heater on and we were bundled up in our coats.  We decided to peel off our layers and let Hylie out of her car seat.  (We were creeping along so slowly and infrequently, we figured we might as well make Hylie as comfortable as possible.)  Needless to say, she was THRILLED to be sitting on Mom's lap instead of buckled up.

About 45 minutes into our wait, we all of a sudden heard a pretty big 'crunch' and looked over to see a huge SUV had rammed the tail-end of the mini-van in front of it.  Yikes.  We thought we had it rough waiting in line, we at least didn't have to call our insurance company to report an accident that happened at less than 2 miles an hour and probably caused at least $1,000 in damage--yep, it was pretty bad.

Finally, an hour and a half later after we got into line, we finally entered the park.  Of course being we are almost ready to turn in to the park, Hylie has an epic meltdown and kicked the car into neutral.  For more evidence that Hylie was pretty delirious she was pointing to trees and asking if it was a cat or a donkey.  Great!  The entrance to the display had every cartoon character under the sun, so Hylie did enjoy pointing out the ones she new.  However, when we were about halfway through, Hylie started gagging.  I knew what was coming next and frantically tried to open the door, but it was locked.  Geoff pulled over and I finally got the door open...a little too late.  Both Hylie and I were covered in pickles and chocolate vomit.  Luckily, it wasn't the flu or anything, it was just a one-time incident (thanks, Sixlets!).  For the rest of the 15 minute show we had the windows rolled down in a vain attempted to air the car out.  It did nothing!  We pulled over again and cleaned up as best as we could, got Hylie back in her car-seat and headed home.  We were a pretty pathetic bunch: we were tired, we smelled horribly, I had a headache, the car was all fogged up, Hylie was miserable.  So it was quite comical to hear the song "So This is Christmas" by John Lennon pipe through the radio as we finally headed home.  Geoff started laughing hysterically as we both agreed that we will NEVER do this again!

But hey, we have a pretty classic Christmas adventure to tell now, right?