Christmas in Cedar City

Now, I’ll admit I’ve never been a fan of Cedar City. It was windy and LAME.  However, Christmastime in Cedar City was always a blast.  They have a Christmas parade and festivals and winter wonderland.  So we decided to venture down to Cedar City for the parade.  Plus it was Rachel and Ray’s birthdays.  So we headed down to Newcastle.  As I was doing some research online to find fun Christmas type activities, I came across the Dicken’s Christmas Festival.  Here is what the website said:  A re-enactment of 19th Century London will take place in the beautiful Dixie Convention Center in St. George, Utah. The Festival is created to bring you the best selling experience of the year. Delighted guests will wind through narrow village streets as they shop for their gifts. Our guests will be amazed to see our "Olde London Towne" come to life.  All I can say is WRONG!!  FALSE!!  LAME!!  We headed to the Dixie Center, spent $20 to get our family into the Festival and did nothing.  There were no quaint little Olde London towns.  It was just a bunch of lame booths selling crap.  Here is what we thought of the festival:
 
Since it was Ray’s birthday Linsey let him “choose” where to go eat.  And he decided to go eat at Iggy’s Sports Grill.  The service was exceptional.  Then we did some shopping and headed back to Newcastle.
The next morning everyone was up and ready for a fun day in Cedar City.  The kids were thinking they were pretty cool laying on the floor with their feet behind their back rocking back and forth like beached whales:

Linsey couldn’t be shown up by a bunch of kids:

I was in charge of getting some the younger kids ready.  That is when I seized my opportunity and grabbed Kyle and took him into the bathroom to flip his hair.  He was sooo cute:

Then we were on our way to the jump house.  The kids had a ball running and jumping all over the place.



Then we headed to Sizzler for a little birthday party for Rachel.


After Rachel’s birthday party, we headed back home.  On the way down, Matt’s work called.  They are having a huge end of year audit and like I fool I told him he should offer to come in thinking they wouldn’t make him come all the way back up.  But guess what, they did.  So we left before the Christmas parade and headed home.  I’m glad we got to spend some time with family and celebrate some birthdays!!

High Spirits and High Kicks part 2

There were just so many amazing pictures, They wouldn’t let me post them all on one post, so here is part two of the Radio City Rockettes Christmas Spectacular.
It begins with a doubting teenager and a trip to the North Pole and Santa’s Workshop:









 

That last picture says “Merry Christmas!”
Then they had a little film intermission that showed the history of the Rockettes.




Their finale was amazing.  They did the first Christmas:


They read from Luke 2 and it certainly brought a tear to my eye.  It was a great night:

And we will definitely be going back if they come again.  It was one of the best shows I have seen and worth every penny!!

High Spirits and High Kicks

When I was a little girl I LOVED watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.  I love the floats, and music, and Santa.  But most of all, I loved, loved, loved these ladies:

The Radio City Rockettes.  Picture a little girl in her tomboy overalls and dual pony tails kicking up her heels pretending to be a Rockette.  That was me.  I have always dreamed that I would get to the see the Rockettes perform live.  I would imagine wintery trips to Manhattan (staying at the Plaza of course) and going to Radio City Music Hall and watching their Christmas Spectacular.  Afterwards we would take a carriage ride through Central Park. 
Fast forward, more years than I care to admit, and I see an ad for the Rockettes.  They were coming to SLC!!!!  I was through the roof!!!  I immediately got on the phone with Matt and told him to head over to the Maverick Center on his way to school and get some tickets.  I was so excited. 
A few days before the big day, Jeremy comes from school and tells me that he has to sing at the lighting ceremony, which just happens to be the same day as the Rockettes.  I love my children, but I wasn’t missing the Rockettes.  It was my childhood dream.  So I asked Jenny if she could take the kids to the Christmas Festival and record Jeremy singing.  Then we headed up to Salt Lake with Mom and Dad.  We had some dinner at TGI Fridays and did a little Christmas shopping before the show.  We even brought some treats to snack on during the show.  We finally made it to the Maverick Center.

We head through the door and then tragedy strikes! As we were going through security, they confiscated ALL of Dad’s candy. *gasp.  He was a little grumpy after that.  It didn’t ruin our spirits though:

The show began and it was amazing!!!  We got the balcony seats and we had the perfect view:

The sets were amazing.  It was such a fun show.

My jaw was probably open the entire time I was so amazed at the skill and talent. 

I still haven’t figured out how to take pictures without a flash, so a lot of these will be a little blurry, but it was spectacular.  The entire thing was just so amazing.
 

They had Santa and some Singers come out to transition between acts so the Rockettes could change their costumes:
 
Matt’s favorite number was the wooden soldiers:



 
I was feeling bad that we didn’t bring the kids.  It was so amazing.  My favorite number was next.  Christmas in NYC:











The sets were just jaw dropping.  It was incredible.

 
Coming up . . . Rockettes Part 2