Sunday, December 26, 2010

ICE! at the Gaylord Texan

The Wednesday before Christmas, my entire family went to ICE! at the Gaylord Texan in Grapevine. The theme this year was A Charlie Brown Christmas. Parker has been a huge fan of all things Charlie Brown for quite some time now, so we were very excited to take him to see the exhibit.

We bought tickets for early morning to try to beat some of the crowds. Little did we know that thousands of people come to this exhibit every year so there was no beating the crowds. We started off in a very long line waiting with 4 hungry, impatient toddlers. After the first line, we were taken into another room to watch a video on how they make the ice sculptures. Then we were taken into yet another room where we received our parkas. At this point, the kids were very restless and very hungry. Parker's parka would not fit over his hands and everything went from bad to worse. He started crying and nothing we tried would calm him down. We entered the exhibit and tried to get him excited about seeing Charlie Brown but it was useless. We finally ended up rushing through the exhibit just to get him out of there. After another 30 minutes of crying, we were able to get him to eat a snack, which finally calmed him down.

The other kids did okay but also had moments of melting down. Addison's moment came when she tried to go down the ice slide by herself. She decided at the last minute that she didn't want to slide and started crying. The man that worked at the exhibit had to crawl up the slide to get her down!

If we ever do this again, we will definitely remember to take plenty of snacks with us and we will go on a day that school is in to avoid all of the day cares and other families that were there. The sculptures were incredible to look at... I just wish I would have been able enjoy them a little bit more.

When we asked Parker the next day if he had fun seeing Charlie Brown, he said "No! I just cried and screamed the whole time!"

The meltdown!
Finally getting a snack
After the exhibit, we walked around the Gaylord for a while looking at the wonderful Christmas decorations. We were also able to get a few family pictures while we were there. The best picture was the one we took of our entire family. We have never successfully gotten a good family picture before- there are just too many young kids. My sister put her camera on a ledge and turned on the automatic timer. All of the kids were mesmerized with the flashing light and looked right at the camera the entire time! It was a memorable day with lots of ups and downs, but definitely one we will never forget!

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