Christmas Season

Well, Christmas is officially over :( We had such a good if not a busy one. I told someone recently that I was trying to fit 8 years worth of American Christmases into one. (I figure it has been 3 years since the last Christmas in the states and will be at least 4 more before we have another) We crammed the month of December with trips to see holiday lights, church musicals, drive through Nativities, the Christmas Parade, other holiday items of interest and tons of eating! The one place I never made it to was the mall! Oh well, I get enough of that in the Philippines. Here are a few pictures from some of our activities. I didn't take too many pictures over the holidays. We were too busy just enjoying being with our family and friends. The ones I did take tended to be of the kids' backs since they were always looking at whatever was going on.

Emily and Laura at the church Middle School Christmas Party

Holiday Lights at Roper Mountain Science Center

Simpsonville Christmas Parade

Hollywild Animal Park

This was actually one of the highlights of the Christmas season. We hadn't been able to fit this in and so my brother and I decided to go one rainy night the week of Christmas. Unfortunately Allan was working and missed out. We arrived and began what we thought was a typical drive through of lights. It was nice, but we didn't think it was worth the entry fee. Then we passed through some gates and entered into the "Reindeer Forest". It was basically a big open field you could drive through with deer and Zebra running around everywhere. We opened the sliding doors to the van and hung out the sides in the rain trying to pet the animals.


After driving through another section of light displays we arrived at "Santa's Village". Should we get out??? It was pretty nasty, but since we had packed rain boots for just such an occasion, we braved the muck and the mud to go to what was essentially a petting zoo. The kids loved it! We saw some great animals. One of my favorites was the big Texas longhorns. I'd never seen them in person before. The kids fed bottles to baby goats, crackers to horses and reindeer, and were spit on by a camel. It was so fun!

I took this picture just seconds before the camel spitting incident.
I guess he doesn't like his picture taken.