Christmas in Toledo

The day after Christmas we woke up early (since the kids never let us sleep in) to open presents and have another Christmas morning at Nana and Papa's house! Funny story: Adalyn woke up super early and decided she was going to go wake Nana up. As Nana was trying to wake up, she walked into her bathroom to find that Adalyn had completely stripped down and told Nana that she was ready for a bath. My parents have a big garden tub and Adalyn loves taking baths in it. Of course if it had been me, I would have told her to put her pjs back on, but my mom is a good Nana and obliged her. This is why she had crazy hair for opening presents.

 My parents got the kids their own suitcases and got the large size so that the kids can use them for many years. (My teenage nieces still use theirs.) The funny part is that the bags were so huge that the kids could actually fit in them so of course they wanted daddy to lift them up in the bags.

Happy boy!

 My cousin called and wanted to come see the kids. She brought these two matching reindeer hats for the kids that she made. She made both in one day! She is crazy talented! Adalyn LOVES hers. And both are big enough that they can wear them next year.

We all got ready for the day and headed out to Children's Wonderland. I have lots of memories from going to Children's Wonderland when I was little so I was excited to take the kids. They both really enjoyed looking at all of the Christmas scenes and all of the moving parts. Cayden was so intent on everything too. 

 Everything was at eye level / stroller level for the kids so I think they were extra in tune to everything.

 Adalyn went on a train ride a few times. She was a fan!

 We had a fun day!

The next day my brother and his kids came to town. Adalyn absolutely loves her cousins and was so excited to spend time with them! (Me too!) After church on Sunday we had to get some pictures!

Sunday night we went to The Lights Before Christmas at the Zoo. Yes, it was after Christmas but we'll still call it by it's name. This is another one of my childhood traditions. We always go see the lights at the zoo. And every year the zoo does more lights than the year before!

The view headed into the zoo from the bridge.

Of course it started raining on us but we braved the rain in order to drink some hot chocolate and dance to the "dancing trees" as my nieces and nephew labeled the choreographed lights/music trees. Thankfully the rain was light and didn't last long. We had a fun family time and didn't freeze. The kids enjoyed all the lights and music!

My nieces wanted to go see Frozen with Adalyn before we left town so on Monday all of the kids (except Caleb - he had already seen it and wanted to stay home), my brother, my mom and myself went to see Frozen. We had fun and Adalyn never got restless in the movie. This was her first movie in a theater and she did so good!  Even a couple weeks later when she heard a Frozen song she told me all about one of the scenes in the movie. We can wait to buy it when it comes out!

We had a wonderful mini-vacation in Toledo for Christmas. It was hard to come back home and get back to reality. We made a lot of memories!