Christmas Festival

Our neighborhood has an annual Christmas Festival at the park near our house. Last year, we took Ryan and you can see my post about it here. We thought he would definitely have more fun this year since he would be able to participate more. I was wrong! First of all, it was about 45 degrees and Ryan has never been big on hats, mittens, etc, so I hadn't even bought him any yet for this winter. Well, apparently I hadn't thought it through, but there was no way he could play in the fake snow/ice without gloves, oops! Fail number one. We met a few friends of ours up there, so that was nice. The kids enjoyed hot chocolate and donut holes. Ryan had a nice chocolate 'stache.

We tried to go into one of the bouncy houses that was age appropriate, and after Ryan was trampled on by two kids about 3-4 years old, he started boo-hooing and we had to quickly lean in to get him. Fail number two. So we decided to ride the train around the park like we did last year (remembering how much fun he had on it last time). Well, five adults and three children in one train car was probably not the best idea. We settled in and took off with a sigh of relief that the lawnmower/conductor car was able to pull us. Well we take the first big turn, and I say to Wes, "whew, we made the turn" and just as the 3rd car began the turn, BAM! There goes the lawnmower/first car pulling away from the rest of us. Fail number three. We felt pretty bad thinking we had ruined it for everyone else waiting in line. Luckily, the lawnmower was able to hook up to the 3rd car and have a little short train the rest of the morning.

We decided not to traumatize Ryan with the Santa there and save that for another day. So we decided to resort to old faithful and spent the next hour or so on the playground. He had a blast! Dad and Ryan did the big boy slide a few times. He has a love/hate relationship with this slide. It seriously is about 15-18 ft. in the air!

Ryan would do his new favorite thing, NO! over and over again with the slides. What you can't see is that there are slides on both sides of him. He would go sit up on the landing, pretend he was going to go down one slide, so Wes and I would move to that side and say okay come on. Then sure enough, he would quickly say "No!" and immediately turn and go down the other slide. He's such a little prankster.

We had a fun morning at the park with different friends we have met in the neighborhood. That evening we attempted Lights in the Heights with the Turners. To say it was a bust is an understatement. The lights were unimpressive, the streets were way overcrowded, the bands/carolers were set-up 1-2 houses apart. It was just a mess. We spent more time parking and getting to the actual streets than we spent actually there. On top of that, with little kids, we were trying to make sure they weren't freaked out by the crowds, I think I only actually looked at 4 or 5 houses. We'll have to really consider attempting it again next year. Oh well, I think Ryan still had fun being all bundled up in the stroller, staying out late :) He was amped up when we got home at 9:15!