We got Uncle Rob started/hooked on Pokémon so we went out on one of our typical drives/hunts…and the kids took their new plush Pokémon they got from Santa.
And their Pikachu rode with me.
And then we took over a gym on one of our walking trails. We didn’t actually walk the whole trail, though—we just cheated and ran down to the pond.
With Uncle Rob here we can put five Pokémon in at a time!! (Oh yeah, that’s right, Katie now has her own account because I wanted her to stop messing around with “our” account.)
We set the kids’ phones outside their rooms so they will stay up there until we get up at 7. 🙂 Then they come in and cuddle for a few minutes while mommy wakes up (daddy has already been up for at least an hour). Then it’s downstairs to check out what Santa left… I didn’t take many pictures this year.
A tiara from Grannie and Papa.
A Lego train for under the Christmas tree from Grannie and Papa (complete with all the electronics to make it run!).
Princess shoes from Santa!
Charlie right in the middle of things!
Owen in his MSU hat from Grannie and Papa—we all got one! (It was a very MSU Christmas, which we all loved!)
Katie’s Elsa cape (from Santa!) and wearing her princess shoes!
Trying to get them to sit still with their new hats from Grannie and Papa:
Owen’s favorite gift this morning—a whole box of Pokémon cards! 🙂
I’ve been wanting to do this…so since this is our last winter here it was now or never! ICE!® featuring Christmas Around the World — We told Katie we were going to see an ice castle so she was totally on board. 🙂
Experience the magic of more than TWO MILLION pounds of hand-carved ice sculptures and slide down two-story ice slides. All kept at a chilly 9 degrees! Delight in the celebration of cultures through holiday scenes and travel to the North Pole to see Santa and his elves.
They give you parkas to wear OVER your own coats.
Now, I grew up in Michigan. I know 9° weather. I’ve lived in 9° weather. And let me just say my body no longer likes 9° weather. EGADS was that cold. I’m very glad they gave us the extra parkas…
Waiting for the ice slide!
The ice slide!
And this is where my phone died from being too cold. It had only been out 12 minutes! Thankfully Tom’s had been under all his coats so he got his out and his worked better in the cold.
The kids liked it but it was really quite cold. I have to be honest and say I rushed through a bit faster than I’d planned because I was FROZEN. OF course after you exit, the outside 34° felt like a sauna! Then it was back inside the resort where they had lots of things set up to siphon away your money like photos, hot chocolate, mini carnival rides, Build-A-Bear, cookies with Mrs. Claus, etc… Katie really wanted to ride the tea cups and since I’m all about either of them learning to like rides, we spent the $5. She enjoyed it.
Then since it was lunch time and we were close to a yummy restaurant…we went to Succotash (it’s where we ate lunch before the USMC ball). The kids had a bit of hat head. 🙂
And then after we left we drove around National Harbor Pokemoning for about a half hour!!
Overall I’m glad we went…but it was a big chunk of money for what it was.
They were busy busy busy in the basement this afternoon and they finally told us they were putting on a gymnastics show. So we went down before dinner. This is what we saw…
At the top of the stairs:
Gymnastics show 6:00–6:30pm
Gymnastics show 6:00–6:30pm or 6:30–7:00
At the bottom of the stairs—see it?
Directional arrow!! 🙂
Another arrow!
The stage…
…and labeled audience seating area.
Afterwards we went to look at the label on the bounce house:
And then we noticed this afterwards (not sure how we missed it):
It was sunny so Katie wanted to do chalk…but it was chilly. Hence the winter coat. Of course, chalk only lasted about two minutes and then she was off collecting leaves.
The amount of toys they have that they don’t play with is insane. I dumped out all the bins from the shelving unit and I’m making them pick out their favorite things and the rest is going away. (And this is just upstairs. Ugh.) Happy Thanksgiving?!
Katie has been asking for a dollhouse so I reminded her she had one…so they had to pick up and make room for it. We’ll see how long they stay interested this time. Last time (after it was opened at Christmas) it lasted about a week.
We went to a friend’s house to stay with her napping kid while she had to make an emergency run to school. Katie immediately took to the car. I instantly felt guilty again about selling theirs. 🙁
I had a coupon that we needed to use (which I also bought last year but we missed out on) so I was determined to NOT miss it again…so we went today since it was sunny and daddy had the day off! Katie didn’t want to go because she thought it was going to be super buggy like when we went with Grannie in the UP this past summer!
It was interesting because there had just been a huge windy and kinda stormy day so the entire course was literally COVERED with huge acorns! We started to clean them off but it was really a lost cause because each hole had anywhere from 20 to 300 little hazards on it and we were spending more time cleaning than playing! So we just moved the big tree branches and had more fun with the little hazards!!
I got a hole in one here!
And then I decided to record the kids playing one hole—Katie went first:
And then Owen started before I could start recording again…and he got a hole in one! STINKER!
Pouting about who knows what.
Okay. Happy again.
Even with my hole in one, Daddy ended up beating me by 2 strokes (59 to my 61), Owen was third with 67 (which was actually quite impressive, though we were quite generous with counting his strokes), and Katie was last with an unofficial 76 (she pretty much drags the ball to the hole).
Of course we ended the trip with a Pókemon hunt around the campground and marina…which I think they were more excited about. 🙂
