Good-bye Winter Village and Helloooo Spring!
Some call them Christmas Villages but when they’re left up past the Christmas season and they are in our house they soon become called ‘Winter Villages’.
I really don’t mind that they stay up longer than Christmas do you? Seriously they are kind of a nice addition to our kitchen decor and they are displayed out of our way so it’s a win win! I think I l leave them up maybe a week or month longer than they should just because maybe I’m can? For some reason every year once I get the houses up one or more of the bulbs in the buildings seem to give me trouble. So I have to jump back up on the countertop and hopefully keep my balance by hanging onto one of the cupboards as I reach out to grab the house. I stare at the bulb like it’s going to give me an answer or something why it wasn’t working and then I find out that it either it came loose or just had enough and quit working. Whatever the case, once I see that most of them are working that’s the way they stay until they come down again. My theory is that some of the town folk went to bed early 🙂
But now that it’s Spring outside and I’ve seen about a hundred (OK maybe only about 20) robins! I think it’s safe to say that Spring is actually just around the corner and it’s time to get this Winter Village back into the boxes and put up something a little bit lighter and more like summer for the next couple of months!
Good-bye village for another year!
OK so was that a little obsessive? I suppose so, but no way to test it out then to give it your all right? I also bought quite a few cream cheeses but I’m sure that I’ll be using these guys up soon so they don’t count 🙂
Since we’ve stayed at this hotel chain quite a few times over the years, we new that it was going to be good. Well with the first look when we were standing in the lobby, we knew that we were right! It was going to be a good week – A VERY good week!
and then in a cab we all went and we were off on our first excursion – downtown Aruba to the Mardi Gras parade! And guess what? With there being 15 to 20 groups each year participating in the parade, hundreds of people are in each group, and with this being it’s 65th year of the parade – it was absolutely unbelievable! The costumes, the amount of people, and just the whole afternoon! 
And with most of the locals waiting for the parade since the very early hours of the day, let’s just say it was a Party! Now did it come by around 2:00 where we were standing? Nope, it finally started to come through around 3:00 🙂 With the music so loud that you could feel your clothes actually moving off your chest, and everyone dancing and having a great time, what a fun thing to see and be a part of!
Other things that we did on our vacation was to go on a submarine tour. Now normally I’m one of those tourists that hook a snorkel mask over my face after you spit on the glass and head to deeper water to check out the fish and coral. But honestly this gig was so much better! You ride a boat out to the submarine meeting place and once your’e on the submarine you find your spot for the next hour. We saw tons of fish and how often do you get to park the submarine you’re riding on the bottom of the sea at 135 feet! For me before Aruba? Never! 
or watching the shows that they had every night. It’s unbelievable how talented the people are in those shows! 
One day we saw some a bunch of people carrying concha shells by us and after talking to them they said the beach wasn’t far from our hotel. So of course we wanted to check it out! After taking a short walk on the boardwalk along the beach,
and passing by the many aloe vera plants that the island is known for
One of the locals told us that when the tide turns with the hurricane season it washes up all these shells on this beach. OK, I think ‘beach’ isn’t the best description for this. It looked like the whole area was made from lava rock or maybe it was dead coral reef – extremely sharp and with only geckos and small animals living in the crevices. Even though it was kind of an extreme from our beach, it was still pretty cool! 
We knew that this great vacation was about to end, and we found ourselves once again on the plane heading back to Iowa. 
Now we were hoping that the all the snow would be all gone once we got home. 
our plans had changed. With another storm blowing in and the word Blizzard was used more than about 30 times an hour I swear – we weren’t able to spend as much time as we wanted before we had to head back to the farm. Which meant that we couldn’t spend the weekend with the kids which was a total bummer! But because William was taking Kyle to the airport on Sunday morning, they were able to hang out together on Saturday which was nice. And did we get the blizzard that they were talking about? Yes we did! We made it back to the farm just as it was turning from rain to snow and also before the winds started to pick up. Man, can’t they be wrong just once this year about the forecast! 
Not good! Well Daryl took the truck one morning and made a path, and then he drove me to work because we both needed the truck that day and there was no way the car was going to make it. 
If the weather turns really cold without any snow on the ground the cold goes too far down in the ground and then your water pipes start to freeze. It doesn’t make anyone happy when that happens. People or the cows! 
But then the weather just kind of fizzled out. Now granted we did get some snow and with no real idea how much snow we actually got – some places was quite a bit where the wind blew it in and other places the snow was only a couple of inches. Well my best guess? Maybe 6 to 8 inches. Not bad and from the original forecast it could have been much worse! 
Yea I know kind of a shocked me too that I read the whole thing! I wanted to learn more so I found some shows on Netflix that this author did on the subject and I watched everything that I could on Youtube. OK.. I was ready! 
and this is the after picture. 
Kind of awesome right? So after this drawer was done I did the sweatshirt drawer and pants drawer with the same amount of luck. I was also able to get a couple more areas done this afternoon which is good because I have a lot of stuff to go through! I’ve got a huge donation pile started and had quite a fire going today with the items that couldn’t be donated. What a great feeling to get rid of some of this stuff! 
It’s always a sad day when the lights get turned off I think and honestly it’s pretty dark and boring outside now!
We set the tables for 63 people and with a lot of laughter and loud noise the only time it was actually quiet was when the special guest of St. Nicolas showed up for all the kids to let him know what they wanted for Christmas. Other than that? Well you can about imagine all the noise and fun it was! The day ended up with a Christmas exchange and of course more food. How I explained it to one of the ‘new’ guys (niece’s boyfriend) is that don’t be offended if no one is listening to you when you’re talking. It seems like there’s more conversations going on than people listening to them and you just have to go with the flow. He kinda gave me this little uncomfortable smirk and slowly walked into the crowd. I think he did OK because at the end of the day he was still hanging out 🙂 
Garland and lights decorated the walls and with it built in 1913 you can about imagine how cool it looked! On a ‘normal’ day there are estimated 750,000 people visiting it and on Holidays it’s around a million. Now that’s a lot of people! But because it’s so big, it wasn’t as crowded as you would think and after a couple of selfies (yup I’m one of those Moms) we were off to our hotel to drop our bags for the afternoon. 
and how can you go to New York at Christmas and not stop into Macy’s? Now I’ve been in a Macy’s store, before but honestly nothing ever like this one. There were more lighted garland and decorations that I think our whole town in Iowa has! I took a quick picture or two and it seriously doesn’t do it justice. 
There was a lot of people in there and with every little department there was a Macy’s salesclerk or two helping. Well it was pretty packed so we didn’t stay too long. I didn’t want to buy anything anyway but just wanted to check it out. 
Bryant Park is known as Manhattan’s Town Square and was also beautiful. As I walked by all the little vendor shops I couldn’t stop thinking how many bars of soap I could sell if I was a vendor. But then almost just as fast I thought how many bars of soap would I have to sell just to pay the rent!! 
It was completed around 1911 and not only is the Library full of unbelievable carvings and extravagant lighting and fixtures, it also houses the original Winnie the Pooh collection in the Children’s section. 
See if you didn’t know, Christopher Robin was an actual boy growing up in London and Pooh was purchased at Harrods department store in London on August 21, 1921 for his birthday. The bear at the time was called Edward which was the proper name for Teddy. The rest of the toys in the collection were also given as gifts to Christopher between 1920 & 1928. Even though these toys were almost a hundred years old, you can still tell how much they were loved and played with. 
The only thing during our whole trip that was not so cool also happened at the Library. See while we were in the building William had someone try to slip their hand behind his hand hooked in his pocket to get to his wallet. When he knew that someone was trying to pick pocket him he quickly made it known to this guy and just as fast the guy turned away and made it through the crowd and disappeared. William said he wished he would have grabbed the guys hand and held on to him to have someone in security check out his backpack. But I’m glad he didn’t. Who knows what else this guy had in his backpack other than probably a lot of other people’s wallets. I’m just glad that it all turned out OK and no one lost any of their stuff during the trip! 
Off we went to the Rockefeller Center. 
If you do not like crowds – my suggestion is to not go to the Rockefeller Center on an evening right before Christmas. I’ll I can say is Thank Goodness for cell phones because we got separated and when we found out that we were almost right beside each other in the crowd we had the worst time catching up each other. The tree was absolutely stunning and it’s something that’s probably on everyone’s bucket list. I’m also thinking that it’s come a long way since the first tree in 1931 when construction workers decorated a small tree during the Depression. 
and then to the Broadway show ‘Beautiful’ the Carole King Musical. Very Very Cool! and just crazy how good some people can sing! 
We stopped by the tree and it was a lot more manageable to get around this time! 
Because there is a lot to do all in that one area, we were just steps away from Radio City where our next stop was. 
We went to see the Holiday Show with the Rocketts and what a show this was! 
It’s so hard to explain but the whole theater was part of the show and during the show depending on what was going on the whole ceiling was lit up to make you think that you were in the show. There was even drones way up high for a 3D effect and with camels and other animals on stage, let’s just say it was a sensory overload!!
But the only thing about the chestnuts were that they tasted terrible and were very expensive. I wanted to buy them to check them out and now that I’ve done that I don’t think they’ll be on my list again.
Did we make it on time? Nope. There was too much traffic to get the train station and even the cab driver told us that we just might as well get out and walk to the station. I think that’s kinda funny for some reason. But we didn’t have a long wait for the next train 
and in no time we were back at the apartment playing the new Jackbox game and having a drink or two of the local beer.
and watched some Christmas movies as we ate the local ice cream – Stewart’s Ice Cream. How can you go wrong with an ice cream company that started back in 1923 making deliveries to Albany and other local towns literally in a Model T and has now grown to have their own specialty stores in a lot of locations? I’m not an ice cream connoisseur – but I think Daryl might be, and he gives it defiantly a thumbs up! 
It was going to be an early flight out tomorrow so once we all get our bags packed, we were able to watch the traditional Christmas Carol Movie. And to make sure that it IS the right one from the 1951 movie, Daryl has his own DVD that was brought along. 
