ICE!

While visiting home to celebrate the new year my family took my nephew Tyler to see ICE! at the Gaylord Resort and Convention Center. ICE was an ice sculpture attraction for families to interactively discover the story of how Santa Claus became Santa. Honestly the story part was not so interesting to me but the colored and sculptured ice was fascinating enough. The attraction was entirely chilled at 9 degrees to keep everything solidly cold. We were loaned blue coats to walk around in. After meandering through various sections of the Santa story, which included an elaborate town square, there was a culminating ice palace with slides for people to go down on. (I won my race!) The very last scene of the attraction was a large nativity display in clear ice as opposed to the colored ice that was predominantly featured throughout the exhibit. Tyler told me he liked the entire display and not just a particular point. We all had a lot of fun and really enjoyed such an unusual (and cold) activity and such creative uses of ice.

 

Visiting Home

Last week I was able to travel home to Virginia where I was able to catch up with family, spend time with close friends, and to celebrate the new year. After a very long day spent delayed at O'Hare airport I finally made it home. Once settled, we took my nephew Tyler to the National Harbor where we rode on a Ferris wheel and spent the evening at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center. The Gaylord had a special ice exhibition that I'll talk in a future blog. The following morning, I was able to check out PAUL, which is a French bakery franchise that is one of my favorite places to get French pastries, especially macaron. That night I was able to spend time with my sister Heidi and her husband Jeff, who took me to get some delicious Neapolitan pizza from a restaurant called Pupatella. Heidi and Jeff also introduced me to their very cute French bulldog Napoleon. Later in the week, I was able to tour the home of my friends Ryan and Xuan (try and spot on of my paintings in their living room), and I was able to catch up with Mr. and Mrs. Clarkson and their adorable lab/retriever Finbar. It was a fun filled week with lots of good friends, delicious food, and catching up with my family. Future blogs will showcase a lot more of what I did in Virginia -- stay tuned and Happy New Year!