SDC Christmas!

This is a late post, but life has been crazy around here! But Josh and I made our annual trek to Springfield to start our Christmas shopping the weekend before Thanksgiving. We both took half days on Friday, and headed straight to Battlefield mall. Which is what we normally do. Except that this year we had Elena with us, so before we headed in to start shopping, I had to nurse her and pump in the car... so, if you've never had that experience, it's quite lovely, let me tell you. Anyway, to top it all of, Elena then peed on me. So we finally headed inside to start shopping, and stopped to change Elena... at which point she pooped all over her blanket. SO, we did learn that shopping with a 9 week old is never easy! But we managed to get some good shopping in, then headed to Hemmingway's for all you can eat crab legs... which were awesome!

Saturday we left Elena with her Grandma Looten, and Josh and I headed to The Landing in Branson. It was pretty fun to be out and about without Elena. The Landing has some neat stores, so we had a good time running around, though we didn't have much luck shopping until we made it to the Belk department store. We cleaned up there, and had to ride the trolley back! The Landing is a neat place to wander around because it's all decorated and has tons of fountains. One guy was nice enough to take our picture in front of one of the fountains (we were goofing off, taking a picture of ourselves, and he offered, so we couldn't say no).

After The Landing, we headed to SDC. The first thing you see when you get into the city is the giant tree, which is just awesome.

There were still several hours of daylight left, so we spent the first bit of time shopping. We made good use of the "Send to front" option (so we didn't have to carry our purchases around) and bought LOTS of presents (so many of you will recognize your gifts as SDC products). Then, when it was getting dark, we headed up front for the tree lighting. It's a great show, where they animate the tree while they're playing music that goes along with it, very cool. So several times I just set my camera on continuous and held the shutter button down. I got tons of pictures, but here are my favorites...

After the tree was lit, the fun really began. They lit up the rest of the park, too, and they have millions and millions of lights... everything is lit up! It's amazing to walk around because there aren't many big lights, so we were walking all over the park lit only by Christmas lights. So we went to ride all of the rides... first up was the barn swing. The barn itself looked cool lit up, but the swing was the best! It felt like flying, and every time we got up high, we could see the lights of the park spread out in front of us.

We also rode the roller coasters, which was so much fun because it's been a year since I've gotten to ride any of them... our trip for Christmas shopping last year, when I wasn't pregnant, but desperately wanted to be. We rode Wildfire, which would have been really neat, except that it had been like 8 hours since I'd nursed Elena and/or pumped, and the shoulder harness was less than comfortable. But we rode Powder Keg, and spent the extra time to sit in the front car. Let me tell you what... Powder Keg, in the dark, in the front row (where there's nothing in front of you) is FREAKING AWESOME!! It feels like you're just flying through the air, because there isn't anything in front of you. That was definitely worth the extra wait for the front seat! After the rides, we headed home, exhausted and ready to see our sweet baby Elena again!

Here are a few more pictures I took that I loved... the cool thing about SDC is that it's all about Christmas- not Happy Holidays or anything politically correct, it's about CHRIST and CHRISTMAS. That's what makes this weekend so awesome every year... and this year was no exception!