Christmas trip

 First a great weekend at Pepaw's and Grandma Carolyn's house in Meridian. 

 Ready for church.

 Stopping at the usual Chocolate spot....

 the morning fight over the rocking chair and comfy blanket....including mommy....  : )

 Then we went to the ICE at a hotel.

 We dressed in layers and they gave us parkas to wear in the 9 degrees room.

 These are real ice sculptors that are carved.  Amazing not just the shape, but how big things are, and how colorful.  They had sculptors for main countries around the world....I kept looking for Norway, but didn't see...this one is Germany.

 Except the people in blue....all ICE...they had Christmas music playing and it was soooo cold!

 USA above....

 Mexico above....

 ICE Slides!

 The kids liked the ice slide.

 In the picture above and below...Mary is the far right...Sarah next, and then me.

 Mary clearly won....

 look at my mouth in the above picture....even though slow and dead last I was....still fun!

 In above picture now Steve's turn to go with the girls.  Mary is in the first to the left, Sarah is second from left, and Steve is third from left....

 Sarah won this time!

 But Mary still had a blast as you can see...they had fun....but at this point even though well dressed, face and fingertips were getting very cold!  Us Texans aren't use to 9 degrees!

 Reminder....all ice, even us now...  : ) look at our noses....starting to turn pink.  Samoa country above with us, not Hawaii.

 Then they had a north pole room....Santa toys room...

 We are even sitting on ice...the whole sleigh was ice...brrrrr on hiney

 Nativity scene....they recited Luke 2 over the speakers in this room.  Very nice.

 Out of the ice room the hotel is decorated beautifully!

 but look how many people....look at the sea of heads!

 We ate in the hotel, they had a Mexican area like San Antonio Riverwalk.  This was 30 mins after ICE and I started to feel sick.....

 Saw Clarice (the girl reindeer) and Hermey the elf from Rudolph.

 We did snow tubing....my phone camera started to die while it ran out of juice.  So I didn't get many pictures while we did the snow tubing...

 Snow ball throwing....

 Sarah enjoyed snow tubing....her face after getting off....they did it 9 times....

 Gingerbread man character....

 Eating gingerbread cookies after decorating them....at this point, yup mommy feeling bad....Sinus and throat pain.

 Next morning, dressed to have breakfast with Rudolph the red nose reindeer. 

 Mary enjoying the chocolate fountain....for the third time!

They also had hidden Elfs on the Shelf throughout the hotel.  Time to go...got fever on the way home...102 plus with IBU in me.  Went to dr and have severe sinus infection and strep throat.  Not fun.  But antibiotics worked fast and I good now.