A FULL day at Nickelodeon Universe!

Santa had brought everyone wrist bands for Nickelodeon Universe in their stocking. (which is the amusement park at Mall of America) We decided to make our visit for Wednesday the week after Christmas. Hoping it wouldn't be TOO busy. We arrived when they opened at 10am. No line for our first ride! 

Thomas loved this one on that day before school started that me and him had a special day here. 

Let the rides begin. Ride after ride. Isaac and Kyle tried this one: 

While Emma and Thomas did the little bumper cars (Mary was too tall)

Family ride on the Orange Streak (ended up our favorite, it was the basic roller coaster that goes all through the park)

Split up again so Kyle and Isaac could ride some bigger rides and I had the smaller kids to do the littler ones.

Family ride together on the Log Chute.

Priceless photo of Mary... well it came with a price that we weren't really to pay so I snapped a pic of it, lol.

Then we waited in line for over a half hour to get into the paw patrol play area. They let in a certain amount of people at a time, play time was 20 minutes so we had to wait for the previous groups playtime to get over before we entered...

We finally got our turn and LITERALLY six minutes in Thomas has to poop.... he can't hold it. Well if you leave you can't get back in so that was that!

Hit the bathroom and decided it was lunch time. Had lunch then checked out this tree gallery they had up on the top level.

Then back to rides!

Littles did a few smaller ride, Kyle and Isaac waited in line that entire time for this ride: 

Lines were getting longer and longer and more time spent line than ride. Isaac and Mary waited for a while for the brain surge. 

Kyle waited in line with these two for the Splat-o-sphere.

Then we all rode this together. Thomas was JUST at the line but the guy let him ride, his face was HILARIOUS during this ride!

Then we broke for dinner at Bubba Gump Shrimp. I figured we'd leave after dinner... but there was two more hours of ride time and the lines were shorter so we returned to the rides! Got in a few I didn't think we'd get in. There was a HUGE line for both the carousel and the ferris wheel all day. But close to closing there wasn't so we were able to do both with minimal wait time.

We ended where we started with another ride on the Ghost Blaster ride. The park closed at 9:00 and we were there OPEN til Close! Whew a full 11 hours of Mall of America! What a day.

 

December 17th through Christmas

Saturday, December 17th we had tickets to see Elf in concert at the Minnesota Orchestra. A fun way to celebrate Kyle's birthday. We weren't sure what it was and was thinking it was just going to be an orchestra version of the soundtrack from elf. So we had watched the movie earlier in the day to prepare. Well turns out they PLAYED the entire movie on the big screen with dialogue and all and the orchestra just played LIVE along side the movie. Which was great... but having known this we probably wouldn't have watched it earlier that same day, lol. 

 

None the less it was fun to get dressed up and go out as a family. We had dinner at Brit's just before the show started at 7:00. 

I finished Kyle's stocking JUST in time! I picked it back up this year after buying it a few years ago. Now all the kids and Kyle have a stocking. I have one for myself that I'll get to eventually. 

We get an ornament every year, but we hadn't gotten one this past year. I was searching for a keeper of the plains ornament before we left Kansas but decided just to get everyone their wn little keeper statue. We didn't pick one up on our southwest vacation... so then I had the idea of chickens! I couldn't find one so I decided to make one. I started with the idea of shrink dinks and had to take a few runs at it. I printed off their picture onto the shrink dink paper, going smaller in size for the final. Then I thought about getting an ornament of our Kansas house... so I found a gal on Etsy that sold them and sent her pics of our old house and she send me the draft. I had her put five holes in the bottom so I could hang out chickens. This is our ornament for 2022. Pretty cute and a great memory of those few years. 

 

Adding to my holiday mug collection. 

The first week of the kids' Christmas break I was working almost everyday in emergency shifts. This was great because it gave me some time away, otherwise I think I would have gone nuts :-P

Here we are stopping into Isles Bun & Coffee after attempting go to the library to find it was closed, it didn't open til noon on Wednesday.. which I knew but totally forgot til we pulled up to it. 

I got a new bird feeder to go along side our coop feeder: a barn :-) The snow poured down this week

 

Girls playing in the snow on December 23rd

Making cookies and such on Christmas Eve

We also picked up our former tradition of eating at Crave for Christmas Eve. I made reservations before church... thinking we had plenty of time and that church wasn't until 6:30. 

We had plenty of time to spare and figured we'd just arrive early, it was 6:15... well turns out church started at 6! HA! Oops, we caught the important parts. 

Playing a little pool before bed.

Christmas morning came! I made our little Timelapse video again:

 

We decided to start a new tradition for Christmas Day: walk across the lake. We walked over to one of the islands. It was a cold one. 

Grandma Judy sent a bunch of snow toys, the kids had fun playing with them in all our snow!