A visit to Christmas Town !

We had the blessing of going to Williamsburg's Ford's Colony this weekend with Johnny's family.

We had a great weekend spending time with his brother Pat and sister Vicki's families and his parents.  There were sixteen of us and we all stayed on the same floor in beautiful condos.  The kids loved spending time with their cousins and being able to run between rooms.  And they were very excited that their elf Freddie and his new wife found us all the way in Williamsburg!  And yes, apparently he got married over the summer to Rose.  They are hoping the elves make it home tomorrow and don't have to stay with the next family who borrows the condo.

The weekend kicked off with movie night on Friday and they loved playing together before the weekend activities.  After breakfast on Saturday we started our day visiting Santa and Mrs. Claus at the club house.  They had funny hats for the kids to borrow and gave them candy canes.  Reagan was very excited to learn there are candy canes that aren't mint - she does not like mint and they had fruit flavored candy canes.  They were a big hit!

After visiting Santa we went to Colonial Williamsburg to walk through town and look at the shops.

The kids met Rosco the rooster and a mauper (a begger).  They got very good at watching out for horse droppings and watching for uneven roads.  Although we went to Williamsburg a year ago, Reagan definitely seemed to be more interested in learning about the people and the way they lived this time.  She learned about the pilgrims in school last month and I think that gave her more foundation to understand what she was seeing.  The people working there were very open to talking to the kids and were good at offering information and not just waiting for questions (the kids weren't really sure what to ask).  They also met a violinist who took a lot of time to show them her violin and explain the differences between the bow from that era and more modern bows.  Although they got tired walking, they had a lot of fun and hopefully learned something to take back to share at school tomorrow.

After a few hours in Colonial Williamsburg we headed back to the condo for lunch.  After a little down time we then headed out to Christmas Town at Busch Gardens.  Although we've been to Hershey during the Christmas season, this was our first trip to Christmas Town and it was very impressive!  The weather was almost 70 degrees so there were a lot of people enjoying the festivities.

As always, every part of the trip is fun.  Cole especially loved riding the tram to the park and had a 100 questions about how a tram is different from a train and why it's not called a bus.  I do my best to answer all his questions, but he definitely stumps me sometimes!  Reagan has been studying maps at school this week so she was very excited to get the map as we walked into the park.  She talked about Never Eat Soggy Waffles (NSEW) but she quickly realized that she needed a little more practice than just knowing which direction a compass leads you.

The kids rode a small horse carousel as we walked into the park and Reagan braved the twisting spider like ride with her cousin Alyssa.  Although all the rides weren't running, we enjoyed the shopping and the lights.  We were also able to see Santa working in his workshop in the North Pole and they had some pretend snow falling!  Apparently they have over 8,000 lights !  Wow, it was amazing.

We decided to go to Das Festhuas for dinner, which is a German dinner house with shows that play every hour.  We got there just in time to have dinner and watch a show and were lucky enough to catch a table right in the front!  After dinner we found our way back to the train station and rode the train back to the front of the park.  It was the ONLY thing Cole wanted to do from the moment we got to the park. He was very excited that we made time for it especially since it sounded just like a real steam engine.

The kids were wiped out by the end of the night and slept REALLY well.  We slept in Sunday, packed up in the morning and headed home to get ready for the week.  We had such a great time and loved creating some new memories.  Everyone is excited about one more week before a two week school break!  I'm looking forward to having my dining room table back from all the teacher, bus driver, and therapist gifts!!


Memorable Quotes:
I was tucking Cole in bed on Friday night and he said, "Hey mom, Kendall came with us right? Because she goes with us everywhere in our hearts right?"  I said, "yes honey, she's always with us."  He said, "Well if she is always with us and we carry her in our hearts shouldn't we just call our hearts  bags?"  I'm always amazed at the things he comes up with...I told him that was a good idea and that I hoped he had sweet dreams.