Happy New Year! We spent New Years Eve near DC at the Gaylord National Hotel, touring the Ice Show. Down across from the Reagan National Airport they built a small town and large hotel a few years ago in what used to be swamp land. The Gaylord hotel is located in several large cities. It has a large atrium with small buildings and shops inside, all decorated for the holidays. They even have a large crystal Christmas tree hanging from the ceiling. The hotel faces the Potomac river. The weather was nice-near 60 degrees but a bit breezy. We stopped into Baja Fresh for lunch while looking out from our bar height chairs to the sidewalk and river before heading into the temporary tent that houses the Ice display. They also had an ice skating rink set up, and the kids wanted to give it a try, but we told them we would be happy to take them skating at the rink near our house. We did join our next door neighbors though and headed into the world of Merry Madagascar. All the ice sculptures were the animals from the cartoon movie Madagascar(lion, hippo, giraffe, zebra) and the lemurs from the island along with Santa and his sled. They actually hire ice sculptors from China to make the scenes which include lighting and colored ice. We decided we actually preferred the clear ice sculpture of the nativity scene at the end of the tour. And you really don't spend too much time in with the displays as the temperature is kept at 5 degrees! They actually pass out parkas to wear while you tour the display to keep you warm. We brought our own gloves and hats which made a huge difference. And Scott and Allison tried out the ice slide before heading home. I thought we would stay longer to see the laser light show in the hotel and the snowfall but it did not start until after 6pm. I also had hoped to do a DC drive by to check out the National Christmas tree, but Tom does not enjoy wandering around DC at night, so instead we headed home and caught the absolutely packed 515 pm mass. We were all pretty pooped out for the day and just barely made it to midnight to watch the ball drop in New York and the firework display in Baltimore on tv. I had Allison watch Jaws on Spike tv that night so she could understand all the shark displays we have seen at Universal studios and the aquariums. We fell asleep to the loud fireworks going off nearby at our Holiday Festival of the Lights display in Columbia. We celebrated the New Year with dinner on Sunday night with our neighbors Dan and Gloria and their kids. We had them and their family over for Christmas dinner and exchanged gifts. They are always very generous to our family and kids. Sunday night we enjoyed our champagne toast and a round of the Apples to Apples game.

Tom spent Sunday afternoon "undecorating" the outside of our house, taking down the lights. The weather was pretty mild, just a few passing rain showers. Meanwhile, I took my parents out to the Target studio for a photo session. I received a $50.00 gift card when we had our family Christmas photo taken, so I decided it would be nice to get a photo shoot of my parents and we three ladies-Allison, my mom and myself. While we were at Target, Scott was enjoying a play date with a classmate. His mom thought the boys could get together on Monday, but our kids will be back in school on Jan 2nd.

I can't believe how quickly this week has gone by. Monday afternoon my mom and I enjoyed antique shopping in Olde Ellicott City after dropping Allison off to work.


On Tuesday, we signed Allison up for an early morning drivers training class.  Allison  has 3 on the road classes to complete and already completed one class. This class was supposed to focus on parking, but after an hour her instructor said she looks good and he jumped to freeway driving. She will get one more class that focuses on freeway driving and then it is on her to pass her driving test. She is not eligible for the test until April. Tom took her out for a bit more driving practice and then we all hit the mall and saw a few movies. Tom and Scott opted to see the new Mission Impossible movie. Allison, my parents and myself all saw War Horse. It reminded me of Black Beauty except it took place during WWI.  We all enjoyed our movies, and we enjoyed using our movie gift card. Afterwards we stopped into dinner at one of the mall restaurants.

On Weds Allison was back to work. We picked her up and then all drove up to Hershey Pennsylvania for a hockey game(Tom and Allison's Christmas gift). It was Scout night and the place was packed. I had already picked up 4 tickets for our family and added on 2 more for my parents. Tom and Allison were very happy with their new seats near the goalie, two rows from the ice. The rest of us were packed in like sardines in the upper rows, but you had a great view of the entire game and we enjoyed our hot dogs and popcorn/drinks that came with the tickets. I also picked up a few patches for the kids for scout night.   The game went into double overtime with a shoot out with the poor Hershey Bears losing by a point. But Tom and Allison were very happy with the whole experience.

On Weds I was  very happy to see our roofers finally made it out to fix our leak. They were very behind with jobs since we have had a steady rain storm every week. They would have come on Tuesday, but you guessed it-it was pouring rain.  Fortunately it did not take very long, and the repair blends in quite nicely. The roofers mentioned that the roof was very wet underneath the shingles, so Tom and I were happy to get the repair done.


Thursday morning I was up early and off to the dentist. I had tried to get a tooth repaired-an old cavity refilled, but the tooth was still bothering me since November. The dentist felt it would benefit from a root canal which is what I had been thinking. So I was busy in the dentist chair for 1.5 hours. I felt better knowing that my procedure was successful. The dentist mentioned that he had been busy working on another patient with a root canal last Thursday when the power went out. That was when Tom was busy trying to clean and vacuum. Turns out a car accident took out the power supply to the neighborhood. I was glad it was not during my visit! While I was at the dentist, Tom took the kids to our new library. Allison was meeting with a fellow student to work on a chemistry project. Scott was scoping out the new building. Scott reports the library is very high tech. That afternoon Allison was busy filling out Thank You Holiday cards while I attached them to boxes of Girl Scout cookies. I scheduled a trip out to our Baltimore Washington Airport with my girl scouts to pass out our donated GS cookies to the arriving soldiers. Looks like the other scout troops had the same idea as several other troops showed up with cart loads of cases of girl scout cookies. (just a little competition). But this was the only free day myself and my coleader had available.  I also took my parents along to enjoy the experience. It was quite crowded and there were several boy and girl scout troops present. I had Scott come to represent his boy scout troop and he was asked to hold a flag along the exit route when the soldiers came off the plane with my coleader's son who is also a boy scout. Meanwhile, Allison and my coleader's daughter passed out boxes of cookies to the soldiers and family members. It was fun visiting during the holiday season as the airport had a beautiful Christmas tree set up and even Santa was there to say Welcome Home.We didn't pass out all the cookies, but I left the rest to be added to the goodie bags that the staff make up and pass out.

On Friday Allison was back to work. I dropped Scott off to the rollerblade rink with his friend Sammy for an afternoon play date. Meanwhile, Tom and I were doing a little shopping with my parents-returns and purchases.(Back to Costco!).


So we made it through the last week of 2011! We had a lot of fun, ate too much, worked on the Family Tree program on the computer and organized paperwork(birth certificates and baptismal certificates), and did a lot of running around.

Here's to a Wonderful New Year! Enjoy photos from the Ice show featuring the Madagascar characters, the Gaylord Hotel, church Nativity and the Airport-passing out cookies to the returning soldiers. The Baltimore Blog