Holiday Highlights!

A few days before Christmas, Mike actually had the whole day off, so we decided to celebrate! It was Sam's last day of school before the break so she got out a little early. I took the boys with me to her school for her Christmas party. It was really cute! They had a book exchange and they each got to make their own gingerbread house - graham crackers are the way to go! We were all decked out in our Christmas gear, so we decided to head downtown and spend the afternoon enjoying the Christmas festivities. We were a little worried as we drove to Denver since it was snowing pretty good the whole way there. We were lucky though and the snow stopped as we got closer and closer to downtown. Our first stop was at the Christ kindle Market. Every year in Denver they have a little German holiday market. I haven't been for a few years and really wanted to see it. Unfortunately, it wasn't very big this year, so there wasn't much to see. I guess they had been using a different venue for the past few years and they haven't been making much money, so this year they moved back to downtown and are slowly having to build things back up. It really is neat, so I hope it keeps getting bigger. We enjoyed ourselves anyway and had a good brat dinner and hot cider. It was the kids first time eating bratwurst - and Kaden even liked the sauerkraut!
On our way back to the car we rode the bus that goes up and down the 19th street mall, just for fun. The kids hadn't been on a city bus before and were pretty thrilled about the idea. Oh, the simple pleasures of childhood! From there we made our way to the Denver Zoo for "Zoo Lights"! This was really fun! We had never taken the kids before and they really loved it. The whole zoo is decked out in Christmas lights with various animal-shaped lights hidden everywhere. We were really lucky and it wasn't very crowded, so the kids loved running from each new display to the next. It was nice to see their excitement wasn't affected by the cold - since it was below 30 that night. They never complained once about the cold - only that mom and dad were moving too slow. They ran ahead so often that I had to keep calling them back, and since the boys were dressed basically exactly the same and I couldn't really tell who was who from behind in the dark, and I kept calling Kaden, Gavin. After about the third time correcting me, Kaden was a bit irritated with me and finally said "Mom, I'm Kaden! Don't do it again!" It was pretty funny. Yes, even I get them mixed up once in a while.

A little something for Grandpa Don!

Some frogs for Grandma Ral!
Their favorite display was the huge "hungry hippo"!