The next morning which was Friday, we loaded up mom's car and headed over Stevens Pass to a small Bavarian town called Leavenworth. I have always wanted to see the lighting ceremony. I was super excited since it had started to snow a week before we got there. It was going to be much colder than we were all used to. By the time we pulled in to town around 2:30pm, it was a whopping 15 degrees. We hit the starbucks and checked into our hotel. It was in a super location as it was right across the street from the lighting ceremony AND the sledding hill. We dumped off our stuff in the room, dressed the kids in their warm clothes and we headed out with our sleds.
The lighting ceremony wasn't until Saturday night so we had the rest of Friday to goof around.We got over to the sledding hill and of course Brooke loved it. Kyle was OK with it and went a few times. He was more interested in playing on a snow hill. It didn't take Brooke long before she was asking to do it all by herself. Our little daredevil.
After awhile of sledding, we decided to take the kids back over to the hotel to warm them up in front of the lobby fireplace. The kids have never had hot chocolate before so we decided to let them try it. They liked it. So they sat in front of the fire and had hot cocoa.
After a little warm up, we headed next door to have some pizza. I loved it when I asked the waitress what type of wine they had and she told me they had a "chardonaid." Love it...I'll take a glass. I swear when we walked out of the pizza joint to walk next door the air was so cold it hurt my lungs to breathe. What a SoCal whimp!!The next morning we got up, had some breakfast and headed back out to the sledding hill and to play in the snow. After awhile, we decided to go into this tent. Well it had some spiced hot red wine called Gluwein. It was pretty good. It was super cute while we were in there, Kyle found his breath. I could see him out of the corner of my eye playing with his breath so I of course grabbed the camera to start filming. It's so fun to experience those firsts with the kids. While we were in there, we heard this calling. We had no idea what it was so we looked at one of the guys that was in there working. He told us it meant Santa was coming. We quickly dressed the kids back into their warm clothes and headed back over to the gazebo where everything was happening. It was perfect. There weren't a lot of people there yet so the kids got to see Santa, Father Christmas, St. Nick, Frosty, Rudolph, etc. We got pictures with all of them.
I could go on forever about the weekend and this would be the longest post yet!! The lighting ceremony was that night. WOW! Mother Nature picked a grand time to be freezing. It was in the low single digits and it was COLD! Everyone gathered around the gazebo and the streets right there and one by one, they turned on the lights while singing silent night. It was really cool to see the entire town lit up.
Needless to say, after the ceremony, we left to go get warmed up.Our other eventful thing was that we went on a sleighride. Talk about cold! About 10 minutes into it and my feet were freezing. We went on the dinner sleighride so our ride was about 25 minutes or so and then we came back to eat dinner at the lodge. It was fun.
It was so quiet while we were out there in the woods and of course we all had to sing jingle bells! It was very beautiful being out there with all of the snow covered trees...it was just COLD!!! We stopped by a fire when we were almost done and got some hot cider. I basically wanted to stick my feet in the fire they were so cold. The kids won't remember it but it was a fun family outing.The next day was Monday and we were headed back to Bellevue for the rest of the trip to stay with my parents. I just couldn't believe how much snow was there. I was hoping for a white christmas.
No comments:
Post a Comment