Ice Exhibit

Thanksgiving is almost here and yet we are already starting in with some of our family's Christmas traditions. I have wanted to visit the Ice Exhibit at the Gaylord Texan before we moved to Germany. It's been that long! This year we finally went. Blue Rock loved it! He's really been into ice lately, making it various shapes, watching it melt, wanted to see it steam. So this exhibit was perfect for him. He literally jumped for joy when he found out we were going to an ice exhibit. 

As a special treat, we took the kids to eat lunch at The Rainforest Cafe before we went to the exhibit. Blue Rock and Princess both loved the restaurant. They both liked seeing the animals and all the excitement that goes on in the rain forest. 

The Gaylord Texan was decked out for Christmas. It was fun walking around the hotel and checking out all of their displays. But the highlight was definitely the ice exhibit which featured over 2 million pounds of ice. This year's theme was Frosty the Snowman. We took Blue Rock to see the play, Frosty the Snowman last year so he was familiar with it. There were some ice slides that were fun to ride down. The exhibit ended with a beautiful ice nativity scene. We are really glad we went, even though it was literally freezing cold! After we were done, we got some hot chocolate to warm us up. We hope to make this an annual event! It really is a neat event. I recommend going to see it, even though it is pretty pricey. Use a coupon! Here are some pictures from our visit. The guys from China who come and sculpt the ice really do a fantastic job! By the way, strollers are not allowed in the ice exhibit but there is an area to park your stroller. Dress warmly. They also hand out parkas, including small ones to babies and children. 

Goofty brother at Rainforest Cafe

Waiting in line for the ice exhibit

There was a lot of excitement

Walking to the entrance, we all got parkas

Large Frosty

Me and my cute snow boy!

Ice slides, lots of fun!

Princess was cold and got tired of waiting for us all to go down the ice slides

It was fun!

The guys!

Blue Rock got an ice apple at the end of our exhibit

He loved his ice apple but we had to give it away because it was melting and messy!

There's also snow tubing

 

They are such sweet kids!

Japanese Festival

I love Fall and all the fun activities there are. The weather in Texas is still pretty hot, but it's cooler than it has been. Last weekend we went to the Japanese Festival. We are just starting to study Asia as part of our homeschool, so this was a fun outing. The festival was a lot of fun and there were several fun activities for the kids to do. Blue Rock loved learning more origami. He's gotten really good at it and it was neat to show him a bunch of different things people have done. They even got their names written in Japanese. He also liked feeding the fish and even made a little fishing pole out of a tall piece of grass. He picked up a dead dragon fly and tried putting it on his fishing line as bait to catch a fish. When that wasn't working he reached in the pond to try and grab a fish that way. He's so much fun! Princess loves being outside and she has fun anywhere we go. 

One of Blue Rock's favorite games was a game that they gave him a little fishing net that dissolved in the water. He could scoop up as much prizes as he could before the net broke. He loved this! While we were there he was thinking about how he could recreate this game. When we got home he had a plan and did a great job coming up with recreating the dissolving fishing net game. He made some for him and his sister. 

After the festival, we went and ate fish for lunch. It was a lovely morning.

You can kind of see his fishing pole here

Fishing by hand

Dissolving fishing poles