ICE and SNOW

J and I took the boys to ICE and SNOW at the Gaylord Palms Resort on Saturday.  If you’ll recall, J won two adult tickets to the event when he won the pumpkin carving contest back in October.  We were happy that J did not have to be in DC on our ticket date although the friend who gave them to us would have happily traded tickets with us if we found ourselves in a bind.

I took the boys to ICE last year with B and Steph.  While the event was awesome in 2009, I have to report that it has much improved for 2010.  Santa Claus was there, we were treated to steaming cups of hot chocolate, the boys were able to e-mail Santa their Christmas wish at kiosks set up in the hall…  It was all very neat and definitely put us in the Christmas spirit!

Many things were the same like the nifty blue parkas, the ice slides and amazing colored ice displays.  Nine degrees once again proved to be too cold for my camera.  It locked up after an hour or so of below freezing temps.  At least it worked long enough for me to capture some good pictures.

Perhaps the best improvement to the event was the addition of SNOW!  Wildman was thrilled as you can see!  Cutie Pie was feeling a bit under the weather and refused to participate in anything snow related.

That didn’t prevent Wildman from enjoying the powdery stuff with gusto…

It was perhaps the only chance that Wildman will ever get to go tubing on snow in Central Florida!  He had so much fun!

The cherry on top of our wonderful day came when Wildman won the hourly raffle at SNOW!  He played several carnival games for raffle tickets and ended up winning his pick of prizes when they called his number.  The prized husky now has a place of honor on Wildman’s bed.

I think going to ICE and SNOW needs to be a family tradition!

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Spring Family Fest

Some local beachside churches in our area got together to host a Spring Family Fest on Saturday evening.  We didn’t have any plans so we decided to head over there when J got back from kiteboarding napping at the beach…  Big Red tagged along since he had his boys this weekend.  We put up with him because of the boys…

The event took place in the parking lot of a semi-abandoned strip mall where one of the host churches resides.  It was not the most picturesque location what with all the heavy equipment, piles of dirt and boulders strewn about but it was fun.  And I certainly can’t complain because it was free as well!

The boys immediately made a beeline for the pony rides.  The same lady from the Spring Festival last weekend was doing the pony rides for this event!  She must be on the church festival circuit 🙂  The older boys rode the horse first.  Big Red completely missed this because he had to run to the bank for dinner money…

The little dudes entertained themselves with the tortoise while they waited for their turn.

They thought the horse ride was pretty fun too:

All four of the boys were thoroughly amused by the pig in the “petting zoo”.  I put that in quotations because it was basically a pig and a goat tied to a Jeep.  There was a table set up with a caged rabbit and a caged iguana in addition to the tortoise in the tub.

There were the usual fair activities like the bounce house, a bean bag toss game and the sno-cone station.

Then there were some more unique things like the foosball table (could not tear the boys away) and the surf video.

After we’d filled our bellies with yummy food from the booths of two local restaurants and finished watching the surf video, we headed over to Starbucks for a special treat.  The boys either had hot chocolate or chocolate milk and the dads had dark chocolate cherry Frappucinos.  I was too full from dinner so I just took pictures 🙂

We had a great evening and ended up seeing lots of people we knew at the festival.  It was nice to catch up with old friends and spend quality time with our children.