Grant is twenty-four! It's crazy to think that we met when he was only twenty, and now we just celebrated his twenty-fourth birthday. Of course I'm not saying, "he's so old" or anything like that. I just think it's fun (and sometimes unbelievable) to think back on all the birthdays we've celebrated together and realize how long it's been since that very first one.
This year for his birthday, we started the celebrations early. His actual birthday was Saturday, but since we knew we were going to be busy that day, we wanted to make time to celebrate with everyone. So on Thursday we went to our nephew Steel's "Pirate Christmas" play where he was an awesome pirate with a green beard. They sang fun Christmas songs and located Santa Claus, known to the pirates as "White Beard." It was really entertaining and Steel did a great job! Afterward we all went over to Todd & Diana's for cake and ice cream.
Friday night Grant and I did our own thing. He had said he wanted to see a movie for his birthday, but since Saturday was going to be busy, we scheduled it a head of time to make sure it happened. So Friday night we went and saw Sherlock Holmes--which was so fantastic! If you haven't seen it yet, definitely go.
Then on Saturday (Grant's actual birthday) we did something we rarely get to do anymore: sleep in. It was really great :) Once we woke up, we went downstairs and I made Grant "Happy Birthday" Pancakes (a new family tradition that we've started doing for important days).
After pancakes, we came upstairs and Grant opened presents. It was hard to decide which present he should open for his birthday and which present he should open a week later for Christmas, so I just had him open whichever presents he wanted under our tree.
After he opened all the presents he wanted to open, we got ready and headed to the Gaylord Resort in Grapevine for "ICE." This is an annual ice display they have around Christmas time at a huge hotel/resort nearby. They fly in about 50 artists from Northern China to sculp and carve ice for their display, and it really is amazing. This year the theme was "Shrek the Halls" so the ice sculptures were all Shrek characters. It was absolutely freezing--because they have to keep the ice solid--but really cool! We enjoyed seeing the different sculptures and going down the ice slides.
They had everyone wear these huge jackets--very unattractive, but warm!
"ICE" took the majority of the day because when we got there we thought we would be able to buy tickets and go right in, but that was not the case. We had to buy tickets for the next "session" which was an hour and a half, or two hours later. We killed the time by walking around the Gaylord and seeing all the Christmas displays, including a life-size Gingerbread House, huge Christmas trees, giant snowmen, and thousands of lights.
But we did finally get into "ICE" and even though it was very, very cold, we loved it! Afterward we did some quick Christmas shopping for our families and then went to Bucca di Beppo for Grant's birthday dinner. We knew we wanted Italian food because it's Grant's favorite, but we wanted to try something new. The food was great and the service was really good too. I told our waiter it was Grant's birthday, expecting to get a free piece of cake or something, like they normally do at restaurants. However, Bucca di Beppo has a weird thing they do for birthday--they got this giant candle, lit it, and sang a rediculous birthday song to Grant. It was awesome because it was very embarrassing :)
After dinner we drove into Dallas and stayed the night at a Hilton down town. We originally wanted to go out of town for the weekend--to Austin or possibly Houston--but weren't able to because I had to work. So we still wanted to feel like we were getting away, and staying downtown was perfect for that. We slept in again the next morning, came home to get ready for church, and then went to Justin and Holly's ward to see them (they had flown in the night before). It was a perfect ending to Grant's birthday weekend!
