A Super Full Christmas Season!

2013 quickly came to a close. The year was full of adventures and December was no exception. We were able to take a tour of the Historic Hotel Hershey. We learned more of the history & generosity of Milton & Catherine Hershey and enjoyed the beauties that have been added to the hotel since the 1930s.

Dan decided to try some of all the pastries.

It was fun to be home one evening and discover a rebroadcast from a former Christmas performance:

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir rebroadcast on PBS in PA, who knew?!

Some of the student homes were built in the 60s and have basements with bomb shelters in them. One particular home has turned their bomb shelter into a miniature of the school and town of Hershey with train sets running throughout. They've even included rides and characters from Hershey Park!

A student home & the school's creamery shop

Founder's Hall-there's even a wedding taking place outside the gazebo!

We joined my sister, Ann, and her family for Christmas. We had a great time with all of them joining in their family traditions and celebrating Christmas!

Towers are made to be knocked down!



Gingerbread House Decorators Extraordinaire; sounds like a future HGTV show they should host.



The traditional retelling of the Nativity Story:

Christmas morning came and it was enthusiastically welcomed by the young ones! The gifts couldn't be opened fast enough; it was so fun to watch everyone's excitement.

Part of their tradition is to open a gift all the way and play with it before moving onto the next gift. Sometimes that happened and sometimes it was more exciting to move onto the next package and see what it contained.

Dan and I took some of our gifts with us and added to the craziness with our wrappings.

Lucy was so excited about some things she put together for Dan and me. One of the things included in her gift were "tickets" to see the new Disney movie Frozen. In reality it was an advertisement and part of the receipt from when she saw it with her family. So cute of her to think she'd really given us tickets to the show. When we did see it the next week we were sure to let her know. 

On our way home from Ann & Tyler's home, we decided to stop in Charlottesville, VA and tour Thomas Jefferson's former home, Monticello. His innovation and ideas were amazing! We decided that in our dream home we will build an alcove bed between two rooms but can't agree on which rooms the bed should be between-the bedroom and closet or bedroom and kitchen.

Alcove bed picture in 1st collage and all pictures in 2nd collage from this site.

We commandeered the 2nd week of Christmas Break. Since we had only two students all week and four more by Friday night, we decided to make the most of the smaller numbers.

One evening we took a drive through Hershey Park's Sweet Lights:

We received permission to take the two girls to Washington, DC. Though it was cold, we had a great time walking the National Mall and seeing the monuments, walking past the White House, and seeing the exhibits in the Smithsonian's Museum of American History.

For New Year's Eve we had big plans to head to downtown Hershey for their concerts and the Kiss Drop. Well, the temperatures were hovering around 0 so we let the girls decide the night's agenda and they opted to stay home and snuggle down to celebrate the New Year in the warmth of the student home. We had the fire going, moved the furniture into prime tv watching shape, let them select movies, and then got cozy awaiting the stroke of midnight.

The movie ended (the girls picked the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice and LOVED it!), we turned the tv to watch the ball drop in Times Square. For the first time in our lives, we were able to watch it live on tv rather than on a broadcast delay.

Even though his help was minimal, Dan made sure to participate in the puzzle putting together Horrocks Tradition. It was a challenging puzzle Amanda & Jake sent us. His first challenge was trying to figure out how to section the pieces for the most effective completion; i.e. all the greens, then blues, then reds, etc.

Just after the New Year, two more girls arrived. We decided to attend the Pennsylvania Farm Show together. (Out west we would call this a Fair but minus any rides.) We took the four girls to the rodeo first thing. They were thrilled with the different events; pole bending, bull riding, and calf roping. We even saw a couple get engaged between events. (The city girls were a little freaked out when he knelt down in the dirt to propose.) Then we spent several hours walking through the different exhibits seeing ducks, chickens, geese, cows, horses, goats, rabbits, pigs, peacocks, and a butter sculpture. A new experience for the inner city girls and they had a good time.

We saw the following at the Farm Show and didn't even consider giving them our business; we are just that loyal to our Idaho Farmers & Spuds!

It was a full Christmas Break with lots planned and unplanned, exactly the best kind of break and we wouldn't have changed a thing about it!