A Very Merry Shrek-mas

Life has been so crazy the past month, I'm totally behind on blogging! Back to our post-Christmas trip to Dallas (which I started back in January and am only just now finishing *blushes*)...

We stayed at the Gaylord Texan hotel. We've never been there before, but it first caught my attention a few years back when they had a whole Alice in Wonderland themed summer experience, complete with Mad Hatter's Tea, a Queen of Hearts puppet and magic show, and some sort of 3-D trip down a rabbit hole. I really wanted to go back then, but every time I came ready to hit book on the website, I would remember I was the mom of two boys. Two boys who don't like anything to do with Alice in Wonderland. Even when it stars in a movie with Johnny Depp.

And then last December, mom went to visit a friend and they went and toured the Christmas lights and she just raved and raved about it. So I filed it away in my mind for things to do in the summer AND at Christmas time.

Originally, we were going to go to New Mexico for a week over the holidays to ski and play in the snow. But when Alex got sick, we decided to cancel that trip so we didn't lose too much money, not knowing where he would be HSP-wise during the winter break. Happily, he is doing better, so we went ahead and splurged on the Dreamworks Experience package for the Gaylord.

We had a fabulous time!

After our day at Legoland and dinner at the Rainforest Cafe, we headed to the Gaylord. The Gaylord is right across the road from the Great Wolf Lodge - another place on my radar for a future weekend trip. Fortunately, the kids don't really know what that is or we might have been in trouble we weren't also going to the water slide hotel.

Since we checked in late, we pretty much just spent the first night walking around and looking at all the beautiful lights and decorations inside the hotel.

The next morning, we had reservations for ICE, the big attraction at the Gaylord. Its in a giant area of their convention center that is kept at nine degrees. Yes. Nine degrees. They have over two million pounds of ice inside, and its carved into very cool ice sculptures. Since the theme of this year was Dreamworks movies, ICE was all Shrek inside. Shrek also includes Puss in Boots, which we had recently seen over Thanksgiving and loved, so we were all happy when we would find Puss.

In addition to the incredible sculptures - Dragon was my other favorite - the main attraction is the giant ice slide.

They give you these blue parkas to wear.

In addition to staying warm, apparently they also help you slide better.

The kids had a blast on the ice slide, especially Alex. After about 15 minutes of sliding, Ryan was, well, freezing cold, and wanted the promised hot chocolate at the exit. We put him off for a bit, but there is only so long one can put off a whining and crying Ryan. And his father. ;)

The hot chocolate was wonderful... and free, with our wristbands. We were given wristbands to wear for the visit which signified we were VIPs, ie, we had paid for the full package. We would get all sorts of freebies, like free photos and free cocoa, and unlimited slides, and early entry, and no lines, and character greetings. Alex especially loved the power of the wristband. He would kiss it and exclaim, "I love this thing!" every time he realized what treat was in store for him.

We had lots of fun just wandering around the hotel, and looking at the amazing holiday decorations.

 Trains are a favorite of Team Danger, and this gingerbread village display was incredible.

Lunch that day was the Shrek Feast, a character buffet.

This was a win-win on many fronts. First, our seating was for for 11:45 am. So breakfast was still on the buffet when we arrived. Alex got to get lots of eggs (his current favorite food) and Ryan got lots of Shrek waffles (his favorite food). And on our second trip to the buffet, lunch was then out.

The second win was that we got to meet three characters, Shrek, Princess Fiona and Puss.

Third, we got to drink Swamp Juice which Alex thought was the best thing EVER.

Fourth, there was a green chocolate fountain at the dessert table. Team Danger loves a good chocolate fountain.

 Fifth, there was a puzzle on our table and upon completion, we got Shrek Ears (which Ryan and I are modeling below. Alex wasn't having anything to do with wearing a "girl's headband.").

And fifth, the buffet was "free" with our wristbands.

After lunch, it was time for Po's Snow Tubing... basically indoor snow tubing slides in a Kung Fu Panda theme, and Po would come out and dance to "Kung Fu Fighting" every 30 minutes.

The boys loved the snow tubing, and with our bands, we had unlimited runs and, most importantly, we got to go in the short line. Carl petered out first, and after about 10 runs, I took a break and just had fun watching the boys enjoy themselves.

We then took some time to get our Character Passports filled up, and to meet more characters. None of these characters signed - they would just stamp the book - but still, the boys love doing this.

Carl and I are big fans of the Madagascar penguins, so we opted for a full family picture for this one. 

Our final event for the day was heading to Gingy's, for some gingerbread house decorating with Gingy from Shrek.

Gingy is one of my favorite characters. "Not my gumpdrop buttons!"

 

Our gingerbread house decorating went about as well as all my other previous attempts at gingerbread decorating. No one in our family has the patience for this. But we had fun, and the boys especially loved that we let them dismantle it and eat it right after building it. (No way was this sucker coming home to Austin with us!)

We were all pretty exhausted at this point, so we decided it was time to take a break from the Gaylord, and headed back to the Grapevine Mills to try out the big AMC 24 theater we had spotted next to LEGOLAND. Its like the Drafthouse, in that they serve you food inside the theater, except that kids are welcomed. We watched The Adventures of Tintin, and ate our dinner. Team Danger was fascinated by the concept of waiters inside the movie theater.

The next day, Carl slept in while the boys and I went in search of breakfast. We (read: Alex) was thrilled to find a buffet awaited us at the Riverwalk restaurant. The inside of the Gaylord is made to look like a mini-Texas... there's a Riverwalk section, one for Big Bend, the Hill Country ...even a Treaty Oak. Which would be kind of fun in its own right, even without all the Dreamworks activities.

This buffet also included Shrek waffles, which would have made Donkey very happy. "In the morning, I'm having waffles!"

Carl still wasn't quite ready to get up, so Team Safety went on Puss N Boots Scavenger Hunt for the Magic Beans. We loved this! Its funny how the cheapest part of the whole trip ended up being the one the boys enjoyed the most. Anyways... we had a list of clues that sent us ALL over the resort, and we loved looking for the hidden golden eggs, the hidden number on the gingerbread playhouse, and counting the number of presents under the tallest tree under the biggest light.

 

And at the end, the boys were given a few souvenir prizes. They were thrilled to be given their very own magic bean, that we would plant at home and then it would grow and give us a code to enter online for a chance to come back. Thanks, Gaylord.

The bean is still not growing at home, by the way.

It was then time to say goodbye to the Gaylord, and we headed home to Austin via Dinosaur Valley State Park. This was a lovely little bit of Texas I had never been to before, and it was fun hiking and climbing down fairly steep cliffs (that's Safety Mommy talking) to find dinosaur prints from long ago.

Suffice it to say, Team Danger was in their element here.

Never Too Old To Play With Barbies

I want these.

Both of them.

Desperately.

And not just to look at, either.

I'd love to dress up Edward and Bella in William and Kate's wedding clothes. To stage my own royal Twilight weddings.

That's completely normal, right?

Keeping Calm

As an Anglophile, I've always had a soft spot in my heart for the "Keep Calm and Carry On" slogan that King George popularized during World War II.

And its with great joy that I've noticed a huge proliferation of these sayings in the past year. Let's call it the Duchess of Cambridge effect.

Anyway, I've been thrilled to find that some crafty individual has changed them around for pretty much every holiday and posted them online where I can print them out. For free!

I've just switched out my Christmas print for a Valentine's one, and I just love how simple and easy it is to use my same frame for all the holidays.

I have this "Read Jane Austen" one for my new reading room.

And it probably wouldn't take *much* to get me to add this one somewhere in my house...

And I'm toying with the idea of using this at Ryan's birthday party..

Or this:

They have ones that capture all my interests.

And even the rest of Team Danger's interests, as well.

And pretty soon, I may need this one.

Yikes!

Handprint Snowman Ornaments, Take Two

One of these days I'll wrap up my holiday posts and actually move on to January events...

Back in December, the boys and I sat down to create their annual Christmas ornaments to family members (and teachers). Thanks to my new discovery, pinterest, I decided on a variation of last year's handprint snowman ornaments.

I liked that these weren't on the glass balls (which have a good chance of breaking through the years), and that if someone wanted, they could simply hang it as a decoration rather than as an ornament.

Alex's finished products:

Alex customized several of his. The one for my mom, for instance, included a SnowGranny with gray hair. Alex's were also unique in that many of them had a distinct rock star/zombie feel to them.

Here are Ryan's finished products:

Can you tell I helped a bit on his faces? ;)

We even made special pink and purple ones for Laurel and Audrey!

The only hard part was deciding which ones to keep for myself...

The LEGO Cul-De-Sac

After Christmas, we headed up to Dallas for a few days. Our first stop was the new LEGOLAND Discovery Center that had opened up there this Spring.

We were all excited, especially our resident LEGO expert, Ryan. Here he is taking a picture with his new LEGO camera of me taking a picture of him outside the center.

Despite the fact that we had reserved tickets ahead of time, we still had to wait in line for over an hour before we could get inside. This did not start things off well for Team Danger.

It did give me a chance to admire the LEGO Christmas tree on display, though, and decide that I want to have the boys make these next year as Christmas presents.

Finally, the big moment arrived and we were granted entry to LEGO mecca.

Except... it wasn't quite the LEGO mecca we were all expecting.

I knew that it was just a "discovery center" and not a full-fledged LEGOLAND, and I had done my best to explain this to the boys before we went. But after our visit to the San Diego LEGOLAND 2.5 years ago, we were expecting just a little bit more.

When you enter, Professor Bric-a-Brac engages the kids and teaches them how they "make" LEGOs.

 The boys were excited to participate.

 But in the end, the result was so hokey and so brief that Alex and Ryan were not amused.

There was a cool ride you can then go on.

But it was sort of a low-rent Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin that was over way too quickly, and which you couldn't ride more than once.

Other than that, there was one other flying ride, a giant playscape that really wasn't very LEGO like, and a 4D LEGO movie theater. The boys spent the bulk of the time in the plasycape.

 There were also some cars you could build out of LEGOs and then race down a ramp, and this tower you can build and then shake so you can test how sturdy your building design is.

The best part of the visit was seeing how they had constructed Dallas' big landmarks out of LEGOs. It would have been nice to see some other Texas cities as well, the way that the San Diego and Orlando LEGOLANDs also includes San Francisco, Las Vegas, New York and Washington D.C.

It even included a display of our hotel for the next few nights, the Gaylord Texan.

At the end, Alex commented that it really wasn't much of a LEGO "land.".

More of a LEGO City, I suggested?

Nope, Alex thought it was more of a LEGO Street.

Well, not even a full Street.

Just a LEGO Cul-De-Sac.

New Year's Time Capsule

One of the joys (problems?) with kids being able to read is that Alex read in a magazine an article called "Family Traditions to Start NOW!" And since he is all about family traditions, we started a new one this year and created a New Year's Time Capsule.

Basically, the boys filled out a questionnaire about themselves listing their favorite things. We're going to pack in away with the Christmas decorations, and then New Year's Day, they will fill out a new one. Afterwards, we'll read their old ones and compare notes.

Some of their answers were expected, like Ryan's favorite color is blue, and Alex's favorite thing to do outside is play soccer. And that both boys listed carrots as their favorite vegetable, since that's about the only vegetable I can get them to voluntarily eat. But there were many surprises waiting for us. Like Ryan wants 108 children when he grows up, and Alex wants to live with us when he grows up. We were also a bit surprised to hear that Alex listed his best friend as Britten, a boy we've never heard anything about. And that Ryan listed Giles (his new BFF this year in kindergarten) and his cousins Connor and Matthew. But neither boy listed each other as their best friend. They also both wrote down they loved to race their brother. Neither Carl nor I could begin to imagine where this competitive streak comes from...

I was glad that Ryan was able to fill out all the answers himself. He needed help reading them, but he felt more than comfortable writing all his own words. They were filled with fun spellings, which I have to admit I kind of love.

Of course, after we did this I found some cuter examples online of what other people have done, so next year I hope to take this to the next level.