A GREAT Weekend

This was one of those really great weekends, and not necessarily because we did anything super big, but because all of the things we DID do were really enjoyable and most especially, we were all together all weekend (a rare treat for sure!).  At this time of year, it's really hard to have Chris home with us for even part of the weekend, so it was really great for all of us!

In starting off the weekend, the kids were pretty good about playing together while we were able to sit around for awhile and stumbled across their "pretend play" in feeding Mickey and Minnie.

Through one of the Down Syndrome groups that I belong to, I found out about an organization called Variety The children's Charity of Philadelphia (I have come to learn that it's on a much larger scale) that was providing tickets to Sesame Place this weekend for children with disabilities and their families, free of cost.  Sesame Place is currently set up for a "Very Furry Christmas" so we decided to take advantage of this opportunity and register for the event.  I have to say that I have never been and was really pleasantly surprised by how nice it was it terms of being set up for Christmas.  When we got there, we ran into Cookie Monster who went out of his way for Colin (who tried to escape out of the back of the stroller out of fear for seeing him in person) and watched a show with the gang for the holidays.  The whole thing was just really cute.  I can honestly say that I really enjoy watching the kids enjoy themselves.  They seemed to really like it.

For the rest of the time there, we really just walked around and took it all in and saw the parade down "main street".  The kids loved seeing the characters sing and dance in front of them.  

At one point, we tried to get a nice picture of the two kids in front of the Christmas tree at the front of the park, and had one classic meltdown moment from Kailey because she did not want to be up there.  Hysterical...

Makes me laugh every time I look at that time lapse...We finished the night at the pizza place down the street from us and were actually able to order something for Colin there!  He did a good try at trying but mostly just picked some pieces off of the top and ate what he could.  

We finished the weekend off today at the Special Olympics of NJ annual Jingle all the Way 3K.  It was a lot of fun as always.  This year we had a handful of our family there running and supporting, and added some new friends in as well.  Colin and I finished the race together with him RUNNING this year (it's hard to believe he wasn't walking independently last year and I had to help walk him across the finish line last year).  There was lots of festive cheer, dancing, and fun had by all.  

As the Fresh Beats would say, "What a great weekend.  What a great day!"