Life with the Bennetts: Pleasant Valley Christmas

One of the new holiday traditions at our church is to host Pleasant Valley Christmas. It is so much fun. We bring in an "ice" skating rink and open it up to the community for free. (The ice rink is actually a ton of huge cutting boards that when you skate on them simulate ice skating. So, you get all the fun without being soaking wet!) There are horse drawn carriage rides and hot chocolate. We even have a HUGE Christmas village that Jerry Johnson sets up each year. He is carrying on their family tradition that is has been going on for more than 24 years. The village is amazing! This year, they added two more carriages to help with the crowds, opened up the gym for skating and Santa was there one night. It is so much fun.

Like last year, it was held over Ellie's birthday weekend. We missed the opening night because we were invited to a dinner honoring Ellie's teacher on her graduation from UCA with her masters in reading. It was so much fun to get to be there and to celebrate her accomplishments. Anyway, we finally got to go on Saturday night. I was excited because we had never taken the two little girls to see Santa before. It was such a disaster the couple of times we took Ellie that we never thought about trying it with Mollie and Annie. Brian decided he and Ellie didn't feel like hanging out so they went on to ice skate and have fun without us. Fortunately, my friend Susan and her son Colby were there because it really does take a village....

We were the second family in line to see Santa. Annie was really good, but she couldn't figure out what was going on. At this point, Mollie had already decided she was having no part in the "fun."

When it was our turn, Susan quickly sat Annie down in Santa's lap, and.....

Annie lost it! ha! With Susan, Cherie and me standing there, we were able to get one picture in the midst of the laughter.

After all that excitement, we headed outside for ice skating!

Susan and Mollie on the ice.

Brian and Ellie enjoying some daddy-daughter time.

Susan and Colby

Mollie and Colby showing off their skills.

At one point, Annie climbed through the fence around the rink to get to hang out with the big kids. It was quite an adventure that night. Annie could not figure out why she wasn't big enough to skate too.

Ellie and Brian on the carriage ride.

Monday afternoon, we headed back up to the church for one more round of ice skating before they packed it up and headed to their next location. We had planned to meet Caleb and Stephanie, and when we got there, we discovered that Micah and Kelsey had finally made it home. I was beside myself because we were so close to all of us finally being together. (More on that later) It was so fun to watch my kids and my brothers and my sweet SILs.