Gravity Hill

Before a vacation I always look on RoadsideAmerica.com for silly destinations near where we are going. That's how we found the Shoe House and a little detour for the way home called Gravity Hill.

Here we laughed at the laws of gravity as our car and water rolled uphill!

Jason defies the laws of gravity and feels pretty cool doing it!

Check out the video on the website. It's pretty cool. My video didn't turn out very good.

Hershey Sweet Lights

Hershey does like to celebrate Christmas. They also have a huge Christmas light display called the Hershey Sweet Lights. I liked it since the whole thing was in your car with the heat on! We didn't have to feel a lick of cold. Each car pays admission and then slowly meanders through the two miles and almost 600 illuminated displays. Here are a few highlights...

They have a contest for the local elementary kids to design some displays. The winning displays are created and then put out for all to enjoy. Santa playing hockey was our favorite.

Christmas Candylane in HersheyPark

We decided to finish off our week at HersheyPark back in our favorite PA city! HersheyPark celebrates with their Christmas Candylane. They decorate the park for Christmas in lights and characters everywhere.

Of course this happened to be the coldest day of our trip - and it was damp. It only started raining as we were leaving in the evening. Thank goodness! We didn't let a little weather get us down though. We rode the heck out of the rides and enjoyed our freezing cold hot dogs and fries.

The rides are all marked with different candy for the height requirements. Kent was a miniature, of course. Clark was my favorite, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

We loved when the boys could ride together on the rides. They were so good together and Clark made sure Kent wasn't too scared. He's such a great big brother. This is the Extreme (according to Clark's raised arms) Hot Air Balloon ride.

There were occasions when Jason had to take the kids on rides. I couldn't ride most of the rides being prego and all. Those are extreme speeds and bumps on the kiddie rides, you know! It felt silly, but I still wasn't willing to take the risk. We had to parent swap on the rides. I stood in line with the kids who couldn't go and Jason rode twice in a row. The worst part...he hates spinny rides and I LOVE them!

 Ahhhhh...finally a prego-approved ride.

There were winter characters all over the park. Kent was NOT interested in taking pictures with them - no big surprise there.

OK, let's play a game...now you see Kent, now you don't! What happened?!

Clark pointed out the dinosaur behind him! The dino heads moved and Kent got completely spooked and had to get off of the ride. Oh we couldn't stop laughing about it. Poor guy. He really deserves more sympathetic parents.

This was probably the most extreme ride. Another spinny ride that went sort of fast.

Another prego-approved ride was the Skyview - a chairlift over part of the park. Clark loved that he had to jump on and off while it was still moving.

Clark made an insta-friend on this the little pirate ship ride. They were hilarious how they were talking and laughing with each other. Then they decided that after they rode the pirate ship they wanted to ride the teacups together. Jason was very excited about that since he HATES the teacup type rides.

Swings - so much fun! Kent was quite bummed that Miniatures couldn't ride this one.

But never fear...the rides continued for Kent too. He's having a blast on the little scrambler.

They had a real steam engine to ride too, the Twilight Express.

Real reindeer - all 9 of them

The Kiss-mas Tree and some Sweet Lights - we loved that they had a Kiss-mas tree since that is how Kent has been saying Christmas tree this year. Too cute.

Hey...a family picture with an extra member of the family. Such a fun day in HersheyPark!

Harley Davidson

York, PA is in the Factory Tour Capital of the World. One of those tours is at none other than the Harley Davidson Plant. We knew we couldn't go on the tour since the boys are so young, but we really wanted to visit the Welcome Center and just check it all out. On Jason's last day of class we picked him up and headed out to the plant. We had about 45 minutes or so to learn how a motorcycle was made and pick out our favorites.

It's no surprise that they boys loved this place! 

As soon as we walked in, we were greeted by a tour guide with coloring books, crayons and a play area for the kids. They were able to assemble a magnetic motorcycle. Yea...they loved it.

Then they found the motorcycles and were even more excited - not sure what Clark's face means, but Kent is showing real excitement.

We all picked out our favorite bikes for a picture since this is probably as close as we'll get to actually riding one of these.

Almost there!

I have since decided that if a bike is going to make my legs look like tree trunks that I am just not ever going to ride one. Besides...they are very uncomfortable.

I'll take it!

Riding Taiwanese style!

We can't wait to go back for a tour when the kids are all old enough. 13 more years or something...

National Christmas Center

We spent the day in Paradise! Paradise, PA. It is home to the National Christmas Center. A museum chock full of Christmas goodness which was perfect for our December vacation. It started out with Christmas around the world and in different eras. Then of course lots of Santa displays. And some neat Nativity things as well. 

The boys started out being quite contrary when I asked them to take a picture for me. Santa is watching all around and they are going to give me a hard time??? They thought it through and I got this...not too bad. Poor composition by me, but it's a snapshot.

This museum was our second encounter with wax figures. We went to the Gettysburg Wax Museum a few days earlier which was the scariest and most awful display of wax figures. And I know...I've been to Russia - home of all sorts of wax museums. The kids were frightened and the figures were just ugly and awful. The wax figures in this museum were a little less scary and a lot better maintained. The boys still weren't crazy about them, but they weren't frightened either!

Ded Moroz - Father Christmas!

They had a cute little Woolworth's/5 and dime store display too. The boys loved the elf tree since Sam was on our vacation with us too.  

Of course Santa was there too with all of his reindeer and so much more. We decided not to see Santa since Jason wasn't with us. We saved that for Bass Pro Shops.

There was an amazing creche display from all around the world. Then they had a really neat walk through kind of experience where you could get a better sense of how it was for Mary and Joseph. OK...there was no sand, extreme heat, taxes, etc. but there was pregnancy, haha! At the end of the walk through, you got to see this life size creche with, what else, wax figures!

Choo Choo Barn and More

Woo hoo! My computer is back and better than ever! So before we get into the rest of the timely posts, I have to finish my PA recap. That way I remember what happened and it doesn't all go to mush in my head. That's what happens when you're pregnant. Everything turns to mush in your head.

I think this was the boys' favorite day out. We started at the Choo Choo Barn. It's really one guy's enormous collection of model trains set up in a big room. The boys loved seeing the different scenes and trying to find all of the Santas. There were 51 Santas hidden in the display, so we tried to count them all. Our largest count was 45. We also loved seeing the Hershey trucks throughout the display. You know...since we're all about Hershey now. Kent said his favorite part of the Choo Choo Barn was the choo choos. Clark said he couldn't pick just one thing. He loved it all.

Some highlights of the Choo Choo Barn - Hershey trucks, Santas everywhere and the House of Reptiles Rattlesnake truck. The boys thought that it was sooo funny to tease me about the rattlesnakes.

I loved seeing the boys like this as we walked around. They are such good friends.

A Choo Choo to climb in 

We had a lunch at KFC/Long John Silvers and had a great time with hats and chicken legs.

I was a little hesitant to take the boys to the Sight and Sound Theatre, but I am SOOO glad that I did. The tickets were a little pricey, I was going to be all on my own trying to keep them interested in the show, and I wasn't sure they were going to like a live action theatre presentation. Well, they LOVED it! The show was absolutely amazing - the underwater scenes especially. We were covered by a huge wave and the fish, sharks and the whale were swimming all around us. Since we've been home, Kent picks Jonah and the Whale for his scripture story each time it is his turn. The Theatre's slogan of "Where the Bible comes to life" is right on. I'd love to go to another Sight and Sound presentation if ever we are back in Lancaster, PA or Branson, MO.

And...there was an old lady who lived in a shoe! We had to stop by the Haines Shoe House just for Grandma Mary. She would have loved this place. The tours were closed since it was winter, but it was still fun to see the outside of it.