We stayed within the park. It was gorgeous, although very cold. Us Floridians are quite mesmerized by the different trees - not to mentions red and yellow leaves... So beautiful. We took a lot of pictures of nature, but I will spare you all of those and just put in a few. The kids got to play checkers on a giant checker board. I think you can see the pool in the background....they actually swam in that in 30 degree weather.....and loved it. Thankfully there was an indoor pool too where they spent most of their pool time.
One of the first things that we did was go up to the top of Stone Mountain. Nathan really enjoyed climbing on the rocks. I had to work hard to keep up with him. It was a gorgeous day. As we were leaving the top I ran into a friend from Bonita that I hadn't seen in years .
Funny how it can be such a small world.
While we were there we also enjoyed seeing the sites and activities in the main village. The kids saw Santa and Mrs. Claus. We rode a train and listened to Christmas music. We watched little plays and enjoyed some hot chocolate. It was a nice get-away. I know that the kids had a blast.
I do have to record our fire alarm experience for our memories. It was Thanksgiving night. We had stayed out at the village for the end of the night fireworks and to see the snow fairy so we didn't get back to our hotel and into bed until about 11:30. I felt like I had just fallen asleep when this loud alarm sounded and a voice over the speaker said, "Emergency! Emergency! This is an emergency! Please go out the nearest exit." So we put some shoes on, gathered the kids (Nathan was out so Aaron just picked him up and carried him - no shoes) and walked out the nearest exit and up some stairs into the parking lot. We ended up staying out there for about an hour. We had grabbed the room key, but weren't smart enough to grab the car keys. Poor Aaron was in shorts and it was cold. Finally they let us go back in and said something about a fire in the kitchen... So we went back to sleep and before we knew it we heard the alarm again and the same warning being screamed in our ears. This time we got smart. Thankfully it was 7am this time, so we got dressed. Got the kids dressed. Grabbed the car keys this time and decided to go drive ourselves to breakfast somewhere. When we got back a few hours later and we were walking back into the hotel a man asked if we were just arriving. We told him we had left for breakfast after the second fire alarm. He told us there had been a third one while he was eating his breakfast. We were grateful we had just taken off and didn't have to deal with that again. The bonus was that they gave us that night's stay for free so it wasn't all bad!
It was my parents turn to have all the kids home for Christmas this year. We decided to step way outside of Davis "norms" and all go away together to Williamsburg, VA. Julia, Sterling and my parents drove one car and Aaron and I (and the kids) drove our car up to Jonathan and Val's on Christmas Eve. We stayed there and had Christmas morning and Christmas dinner before we took off to Williamsburg. We really enjoyed our time there. It was the first time that Aaron and I had been up to see their house in North Carolina. I do have to say that preparing for and taking all of the presents so that no secrets were revealed was very tricky - thank goodness for Internet shopping! It was a lot of work and we came to the conclusion that if we ever go away again on Christmas we will probably either do gifts early or late (we're such party poopers, I know).
This is Ella. Is she not just the cutest thing you've ever seen? She is at such a fun age where she can communicate and everything is still so exciting. The kids fell in love with her and she with them. It was great to have them together.
