Hometown Holiday Weekend

Owatonna hosts a Hometown Holiday weekend every year and we decided to join in the festivities this year. Kelsey is finally big enough to actually understand more of it and also be able to handle being outside in the cold for part of it, too. Here is Kelsey all bundled up and ready to go!
We began by eating supper at The Kitchen with Grandma and Stacey and the boys.
They had a cookie decorating station for the kids while we waited for our meal. It was pretty cute. Kelsey chose a snowman cookie to decorate and with the help of Grandma, here is what she made:


Next up was the parade. I thought it was very well done with lights on all the parade entries. Kelsey liked the blow-up Santa on a motorcycle. It was pretty cold, but the parade was short enough where we weren't out there too long. We did go down to Central Park following the parade in hopes of seeing them turn on all the lights, but we had kind of reached our limit in the cold and decided to head home.







Friday made it look a lot more like Christmas around here due to the winter storm that dumped about 6 inches of snow. We had planned to go to the Village of Yesteryear for Christmas in the village, but backed out due to the snow. We did go to a very neat event that supported a local organization called Beds for Kids instead.

Today we had Breakfast with Santa. Last year Kelsey was very afraid of Santa and wanted nothing to do with him. We talked to her about seeing him ahead of time and really talked it up before we left, but we still weren't sure how she would react. When we first went over to see him, she grabbed on tight to my shirt and said "no mommy". But then we talked to him a bit while I held her and then he asked her to sit on his lap for a picture and she did! AND--she even smiled for the camera! What a difference a year makes.