SnowFest 2011 and City Parade

Buckle in, this is a long one!

As part of the holiday festivities, Shane and his staff have an event called SnowFest. They have food vendors, a little bit of fun shopping, Santa brings Comet, a whole slew of bounce houses, climbing walls and fun activities for the kids and sledding down the snow hill (which is why it is called SnowFest.) Of course, since we are so far south, there is no snow naturally, so they bring in great big trucks full of snow and make us a snow hill. It was SO wonderful! Because we happen to know the guy in charge, we got to come early and sled the hill before it was opened to the public for the night. (We were also supposed to test it and make sure that it was safe for everyone else. We can't sue if someone gets hurt.) Shane's boss has two girls as well as our four, plus Gibson brought a friend, so we had plenty of kids to try out the hill.

When we got there they were still very busy getting everything just right.

It took a lot of prep to get that hill ready. We waited and waited...

In the meantime, we admired the beautiful tree...

The kids jumped all over this stage. We finally had to calm down since the big wigs were looking outside and wanting to know who these crazy kids were.

This was Gib's little friend, Joey. I know. I'm nuts. Take a weekend when Shane is absolutely tied up and can't help me at all and I'm the crazy one who gets the bright idea to add another kid to the circus as I try to navigate all this by myself. We had fun anyway.

The boys hassled the staff and tried to get into as much trouble as possible as we were still waiting...

This one was pretty good. He just waited patiently and was a trooper.

Finally. After all of that waiting, we grabbed one of these and headed to the top!

The boys wasted no time. They were ready!

Whee! I can't even tell you how fun it was! The look on Hayden's face says it all!

The only thing to do once we got to the bottom was to grab our inner tube and head right back for the top.

We all got a chance to ride and it was so fun! Shane came down once and then he was all business.

Landry and I rode over and over again. Grace told me later that I looked like I had an accident because I was so wet from the snow.

Pretty soon it was time to get off so that they could get the hill ready for the public that was coming. We were all sad. :( The night was chilly and we enjoyed some hot chocolate and chatting with Santa before the tree lighting. When the tree was lit, there was a fantastic fireworks display. All of Shane's staff outdid themselves. We had a great night.

The next morning was the Christmas parade. The parade route was right down our street, so I just walked the kids over to see the fun. We brought bags for candy and weren't disappointed.

We grabbed our seats and settled in for the action.

Shane was one of the drivers. The kids got a huge kick out of seeing him in the parade.

There were all the usual groups. The Girl Scouts and the Boy Scouts, civic groups, horses, school ROTC groups and bands.

Grace got to ride with the Grand Marshall of the parade: Santa! The kids started to holler when they saw Grace. Thankfully, the distraction of a friend kept the crying to a minimum. We are very blessed to live in such a great town and doubly blessed to have a husband and dad who keeps us set with very fun and cool things to do!