HunterTrek.com

After dinner on Saturday 12/6 we walked down to the Wells Branch Homestead for their annual visit of Santa and luminaries.  The trails around Katherine Fleischer Park are lit up with hundreds of beautiful luminaries.

Luminaries

Santa was visiting from 6-9.  We got there right at 6.  Good thing, because this Santa was a talker!  He was really sweet with the kids, but the line moved VERY slowly!  When we were done, there were about 50 people in line.

Once it was our turn, we started with Jillian.

Not a happy girl!

As you can see, it did not go well.

I like Daddy much better.

Joshua rescued her and then it was Wesley’s turn.

Say Santa!

He knew exactly what he wanted to ask Santa for.  Two books - one about dinosaurs and one about penguins and Candy.

Talking to him about books.

Then we wanted to try to get a picture of both of the kids with Santa…

This time was not any better.

Santa gave each kid a small candy cane.  Wesley and Jillian were both very polite and thanked Santa for the yummy treat.

Next it was time to ride the “train”.  It is a sweet man who drives a tractor around that pulls 7 “cars” that are made out of 50 gallon drums.

Goodbye Mom

Both kids enjoyed the ride.  Jillian was very sweet at the end of the ride and was giving Wesley hugs.

After the train ride we went over to the community center where they had hot chocolate, cookies, and a few snacks.  We ate them outside at the playground then walked back to the stroller.

Still eating their cookies.

We then walked around the trail to see the luminaries.  We also walked around a couple of houses that had a lot of decorations.  There was even a sweet man, who had a ton of decorations in his yard, outside in his driveway passing out yummy hot chocolate and cookies.

Looking at the snow globe with a penguin inside.

Wesley was so sweet - he said goodbye to all of the decorations.  It was a good thing we were on a short block.  He made us laugh when we were on our way out of the neighborhood and Wesley said, “they even had bats!!”

Wesley sees a bat - we see an angel

It was a wonderful way to spend a Saturday night!

After last year’s Texas Christmas tree experience we decided to do what real Texans do…we went to the store and bought our tree.  In the Northwest I never, ever would have thought about doing that.  We’ve always cut down our own trees, sometimes with permits for the North Cascades, but usually from a local tree farm.  It wasn’t unusual for us to have 2 or more trees on the top of the car and one in the back.  We’d spend hours looking at tree after tree analyzing its finer qualities and debating about which was the best tree in all the land. This year was a little different.  This year we pulled up to Costco, payed our $40 and got a tree from the back of a refrigerated semi-truck trailer.  It was the fastest, least traumatic tree finding experience I can remember.

I’m not sure if this is something all Costco stores do or if this is just a thing they do in states like Texas with a tree deficit, but the trees had yet to arrive by 2pm (when I was there to get gas) and by 5:30pm (when we got our tree) the truck was a third or more empty already.  So if you want to be like us and get yourself a Costco tree you’d better hurry.

It is also the first time in my adult life that I can remember having a tree all wrapped up.  I’d always scoffed at paying the extra money to wrap it in plastic.  They always fit on the car just fine.  We had no idea what it was going to look like. They offered to open it up for us, but we decided we’d risk it.  We needed some sort of adventure out of the whole experience.  And after all it is Costco.  If we opened it and it was terrible they’d take it back.  And as it turns out it is a nice looking tree.  Not very big (7ft, noble), but Wesley thinks it is huge so that is all that count.

Here is a time lapse video I made of pictures Amber took of the unraveling of the tree.  You can see the kids are excited.

Wesley turned three.  You know that by now.  And not just because I’ve written about it on this website, but also because he’s been talking about turning three since Jillian’s birthday in August.  For months now he’s been asking if it was his birthday and then given the response is always “no” asking when is his birthday.  And finally it came.  And it was over.  But not really.  He got almost a week worth of birthdays.  He deserves it.

We started on the morning of his actual birthday by opening a few presents.  He likes to open presents.  And then continued celebrating by going out to lunch, all four of us, even though it was a work day.

Kind of excited.

That evening we opened a few presents.  The next day of course was Thanksgiving.  And that means a party and to Wesley every party is especially for him.  Especially when the party comes with juice boxes and dessert.

On Friday he got to hang out with me all day since I had the day off.  Not to toot my own horn or anything, but to Wesley that is fun, maybe not as fun as a party, but still fun.

On Saturday we prepared for his real party.  We decided that instead of doing a big elaborate cake which would be both time consuming and hard to get to the park we would let Wesley decorate cupcakes for his party.  He had a blast for at least the first 15 or so.  The last few took a little coaxing to get him to finish.

Decorating cupcakes.

Too many blue sprinkles.

I'm three.

The original plan was to meet up at the park and then walk over to the fire station for a tour and afterwords come back to the park and have the party.  Remember that it was 80F on Thursday.  Saturday of course turns out chilly and then as we are at the park setting up it starts pouring.  So change of plans, no preparty.  Instead we met at the fire station.

I had my concerns.  Our group was pretty young, the oldest are in Kindergarten, and I’ve been on tours with other groups of kids that were a little academic.  Luckily, the firemen were great.  They pretty much let the kids run amuck.  On the trucks, in the trucks around the garage.  It was great.  The kids had a good time and even came away with some hats and stickers.

Ready for action.

New recruits.

We thought we might have to have the party in the back of our Subaru, but luckily it had dried out by the time we were done with our tour.  So we set back up at the park and had a nice little party.  Wesley opened more presents, blew out candles (even though it was too windy to get them lit) and ate cupcakes.  All in all it was rather nice and much less stress than our usual birthday celebrations.

He didn't notice they weren't lit.

More goodies.

After the party we played with his new toys.  And for no real reason took turns dressing up in his new chef’s outfit.

Wesley is goofy.

Dad too.

And Jillian...

And Mommy too!

For the first time in a long time we had a relatively relaxing and low-key Thanksgiving.  We didn’t cook a turkey or a ham.  All we made was dessert (apple crisp and a banana cream pie) and then showed up at Kerry and Bill’s in Hutto.  We got together with a bunch of mutual friends and had a nice afternoon, talking, eating, watching football and even playing a little Nintendo Wii.

The ladies did most (probably all) of the cooking.  Dinner was delicious.

Kerry makes greenbeans

Amber Makes Gravy

Building up an appetite

Headed for the NFL

All the food was really good.  From the turkey to the chestnut dressing.  Even the parsnips were yummy.

Collin likes dinner!

Wesley pretends to eat.

The only downside to not hosting dinner is not having any leftovers.  Okay, we’ve got lots of pie and crisp, but it is hard to make a sandwich with leftover apple crisp.