A Merry Little Christmas Vacation

Last Thursday, we took a very spur of the moment mini-vacation up to the Opryland Hotel in Nashville. I consider my love language to be "vacations", so it was huge that Garet wanted to travel after he had been gone so much. It was an absolutely perfect two days.

We started the day off with ICE. Having been warned that it was cold, we came prepared. This place was amazing and so creative!

The theme of the ice sculptures was "The Grinch that Stole Christmas":Levi loved this little archway made just for him. We had to walk through it several times:Kara is my warm-bodied child...she loves the cold, so this place was perfect for her. She walked around with this goofy-grin the entire time:The highlight of the exhibit are two ice slides (thus the reason for the blue jackets). Here I am coming down the slide. Wheeeee:

We took Kara up to the top so we could slide down with her, however, it was only one at a time. Against my better judgement, I let her slide down it alone. She, of course, loved it - I only wish we had a picture of it!

After ICE, we went back to the hotel to meet our friends Joshua & Kimberly for dinner. Kimberly blogged about it here (I love the picture she has of the boys walking together!). We discovered that our Sit-N-Stand is good for 3 children:

Noah & Levi picked up where they had left off when Noah moved and we had a good time seeing them again.

We spent the rest of the evening and the next morning walking around the hotel. If you have never been to the Opryland Hotel at Christmas, I highly recommend you add it to your list. We had been several times before, but this was my first overnight stay - LOVED IT!

Finally, no trip to Nashville is complete without a visit to OpryMills! It was especially great, because Garet's sister and kids were able to come by and have lunch. Cousins!!!
This was just the perfect get-away our family needed before the Christmas rush. Merry Christmas, everyone!