Candle Light Christmas

The night before Christmas Eve we took the kids to the "This is the Place" Heritage Park for a Candlelight Christmas. What a fun night! There was something for everyone as we stepped back in time to celebrate Christmas the old fashioned way. We danced to the fiddle at the old school house which was a BLAST for everyone,
built wooden trains, shopped in an original ZC,
took a train ride around the little village, fed the reindeer and had pictures taken with Santa, well, we tried, but Massimo was too enthralled with Santa to look at the camera. Arianna has finally gotten comfy w/ the big guy, a first!

had hot cider at Brigham's house, and walked through the live nativity. We scrunched into an old log cabin, barely big enough to fit our small group of 8 yet once home to a family of 13! It was lit only by fire and candle light, what a different world it would be w/o electricity!
Massimo did his best to stay warm through the 2 hour, mostly outdoor event. He is ALWAYS such a trooper!

Enzo could hardly WAIT for our turn to ride the train, and when we arrived at our destination we really had to cajole him to get off! Fortunatly we had another chance to ride before our night was over.
We had a blast w/ the cousins and would definitely do it again, even if we were all frozen by the end of it!

I haven't blogged for so long I think I forgot how to do it. I'll give it my best shot.
Merry Christmas! I hope that Christmas was as magical as ever for you! I loved all the snow that kept falling!
Marco wasn't feeling it though what with all the shoveling he had to do for us and our neighbor. Christmas was good to us though. Arianna is now all ready to play some serious 'school'! She loves her new easel and all her art supplies. She was really excited about a book of 501 science experiments too, that is one of her absolute favorite past times. That's what you get when your mom is a science teacher, I guess.
Enzo is the king of Lightning McQueen, he just LOVES things that go! My favorite sight to see was this rosy-cheeked boy just in from the snow. He couldn't even wait to take off all his snow gear to start playing w/ the RC car (you might notice that he couldn't wait to get out in the snow so he put his snow gear over his jammies, maybe we need to teach him patience...).
At the days' end we loved having some family over to eat and sled...a pretty tough crowd!
For Christmas Eve we got together w/ Marco's family to enjoy an "Italian Christmas."
We ate pasta, exchanged gifts and wrapped and delivered presents for a family in need; that was certainly the best part! That and being together!