Christmas Vacation Fun

Andrea has been hard at work making Christmas presents, so I have had the chance to hang out with the girls quite a bit. Today was a great day. Among other things, we went to an indoor inflatable playground with all kinds of great blow up things you can jump on, jump off of, slide down, belly flop on, fall off of, etc.... I have taken the girls before, but this time Ava was freaked out by how loud the fans were (that were keeping the playground blown-up). She cried the first 20 minutes- hard crying, full-out, holding nothing back crying. 20 minutes. She wanted to leave, but I was determined for this to be a great day for everyone (and I had already paid $13 for us to be there). So, I remembered the most important verse from the Bible of Parenting, "Ice cream casteth out all fear." I offered Ava ice cream if she would play at a kid's dreamworld. This is her life- she gets bribed with ice cream to play at a kid's dreamworld. She played happily for the next 1 and 1/2 hours. Amazing. We went on to have a great picnic at a park, do a little xmas shopping for Ann, and eat ice cream at Chik-fil-a. Yes, we went back to eat ice cream at Chik-fil-a; this time we ate outside. These pics offer little windows into our joy.