Christmas Festivities in Grapevine, TX

We spent the whole of Saturday, December 6th

celebrating Christmas quite festively in Grapevine, TX

which is about 25 miles east of us (where the DFW

airport is located).

We went to a little village on Main Street,

which by the way, is the only part of Texas

that reminds us of New England: red brick buildings,

small shops, including the best French cafe around,

a small farmers' market area, gazebos, lamp posts, etc.

We saw Santa on stilts and Mrs. Claus and a reindeer!

We took some photos around there and then waited for

Gaylord Texas (mega-hotel) Trolley to come and whisk

us off to see the ICE exhibit at the hotel.

Ah, the no-contacts look!

Trolley ride

Nick makes the funniest and cutest faces almost all day--

Inside the atrium of the Gaylord Texan Hotel. This tree is about 5-6 stories tall. There were small trains racing around many tracks and through small villages. The aroma of the restaurants and the hot cocoa being served was palpable. We saw more lights outside and inside of this hotel that we have ever seen, apart from Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah.

They are in front of a full-size Gingerbread house that you could walk in made with real gingerbread, frosting, candy, etc. It was amazing!!

More of the gingerbread house. A sign in front of it told us how many ingredients were required to make this. Here is a list of some of those:

500 lbs flour

200 lbs powdered sugar

30 gallons of egg whites

10 gallons of molasses

5 lbs each cinnamon & ginger Then we saw this guy walking around the hotel:

Mr. Winter perhaps...

And then this guys with a stack of packages--the photo isn't too good, but this is an elf with the rosiest of cheeks, carrying his packages all over the huge hotel. He stayed in character every moment that we saw him. You'd think he must have come down from a real North Pole workshop!

Ahhh... we had to put these HUGE coats on before entering the famous ICE exhibit at the hotel. They keep it at 6 degrees all thoughout the exhibit so the tons and tons of ice sculptures won't melt.

This is on our way up to the ICE slide...

Here we are with a good friend's mom who we haven't seen since these good friends, Annette and Raoul Sanchez, moved to FL. Our kids still miss their darling kids who were neighbors and playmates. This is us with Griselda Sanchez. We had fun going through the exhibit with her!

Santa's chilly lap!

Hard to see, this is a scene of the Nativity they had in non-dyed ice.

Most of the rest of the images were dyed in bright colors.

Here is the slide we came down at the end of the exhibit

Bright ICE ornaments

Icy branch-like tunnel

Look closely to see all of us in the Gingerbread house of solid ice--

Ted and the kids in candy iceland. The kids were all surprised to see their breath coming out when they talked...they don't remember how cold New Hampshire was (6 degrees for a couple of months at least, during the heat of the day!) and that we always saw our breath there. We had out own coats on underneath these ones and gloves, too. It was freezing! But is was a lot of fun and quite a site to see. If anyone comes to visit us at Christmas, we would love to take you to see this amazing exhibit. Months are spent preparing for it. And it has tours all day every day for the whole month of December.

¡Feliz Navidad!