Country Christmas

This is the story of when we visited Santa's workshop, met the jolly fat man himself, took a sleigh ride with bells on bobtails ringing, and got up close and personal with Olaf, Elsa, and Anna.

Otherwise entitled: Country Christmas at Lake Farm Parks.

Also known as: Pretty Stinking Amazing Christmas Extravaganza.

It all began one evening in early December as an elf helped Sawyer build- with power tools (naturally, Lucky Boy brought his hard hat)- his very own fire-breathing dinosaur, which Sawyer painted blue while elves literally danced and sang and tossed presents around.

While the paint on Mr. Dinosaur dried, we met the Big Man, well really, observed him from a safe distance (I have this thing against sitting my children on strange old men's laps....and Sawyer fully supported my aversion, though he was very interested in Santa and what he does, where he lives, and continuously queried us about Santa's particular whereabouts that night, why he was at the farm, where Rudolph was, where Santa's castle went, etc....) Then we wandered into a second workshop for Santa's helpers where we could race wooden cars, build wooden soldiers, color pictures, stuff toy animals, and watch fountains of Christmas-colored "candy" liquid.

Once we had made sufficient mischief of the toy room- two toddlers will always excel at mischief making, despite parental threats about coal and whatnot- we took a draft horse drawn sleigh ride through Christmas lights, pass a gingerbread house, to a horse arena, where we all eagerly awaited the Frozen-themed horse show.

The little Olaf cart stole the spotlight and drew laughs from us all, but a beautiful black Arabian horse who pulled winter behind it was just as beautifully stunning as the little Olaf pony was funny. The show was entertaining for our whole crew, but it was Elouise who was the most smitten with the whole performance and gave the horses little mittened pats after the show.  Sawyer didn't want to pet the horses, but he did feel inspired to watch Frozen, so we picked up the blue dinosaur and brought him back home with us to have popcorn, drink hot chocolate, and sing along with "Let it Go."

We left Santa at the farm.