December 11, 2021 - Saturday

We weren't sure the Yuletide Village visit would happen today because of some crazy weather this morning, but the rain stopped and we were able to go! There were some...snags though. First, we were set to meet at Grandstand Pizza (a pizza place we used to LOVE in Grove City, from when we used to live closer to there), but once we got there we saw that they are carry out only now. :( We improvised and said, let's meet at Ceasar's Pizza instead! We got there and there was no seating. Finally, we gave up on pizza and said, let's go to Dairy Queen. Womp womp. We killed over an hour in Dairy Queen and spent like $45 dollars on fast food and ice cream 🙄, but it was fine. It worked. Then, we headed to the Yuletide Village, but couldn't find the entrance! We kept turning into the wrong place, but eventually figured out how to get in. And, BONUS!!! The people parked next to us gave us free entrance tickets for all four of us adults! And thank God for that, because the wind and cold were incredible. We had no idea if we'd be able to stand it at all. We all got in there, walked around, saw some animals, met Santa, looked in shops and it really would have been a good time, but it just was too cold to be enjoyable. The little girls (Ollie, Naz, and Ruby) were freezing and miserable the ENTIRE time. Not outright crying the whole time, but immobile and glassy eyed and complaining. I had the wagon and we loaded them in there with little throw blankets AND a big blanket over top of them all, but they were still just too cold. After about two hours, Ollie had enough. She started crying and would not stop. We called it quits and left before it even got dark, so we never got to see the lights in their glory! 😞 We grabbed Chipotle on the way home and everyone thawed out just fine, but it was disappointing that the trip turned out that way. I kind of felt bad for even inviting Melis and family and making them freeze out there with us. :-/ Hopefully they don't hate us now!