Ice, Ice Baby

On the last day of the Dallas portion of our Thanksgiving vacation, we decided to venture out for a little family adventure.  We headed to the Gaylord Texan hotel which was built by the same people as the Opryland.  The hotel itself was huge and there was so much to look at with waterfalls, model trains, and Christmas decorations.  But we did not come just for the hotel.  They had an exhibit in the hotel that was absolutely wonderful.  We went to see Shrek in Ice, not Shrek on Ice.  The exhibit actually takes about 40 Chinese ice carving experts and brings them to Texas to carve the entire world of Shrek in the hotel.  They color the ice and create sculptures that look exactly like the characters as well as the backdrop and even structures like slides.

In order to enter the exhibit you have to put on one of their blue winter coats because they keep the exhibit at about 3 degrees...brrr!  Everyone else in the family patiently waited to put on their coats and head in, but Benny wasn't so sure about everything.  He doesn't like standing in lines, crowds, or feeling confined so he was not so into it.  However, we forged on and hoped that he would perk up once we got inside.  On the other hand, Evan was thrilled with everything.  When he gets really excited about something, he gets really quiet.  He doesn't say anything and he just stares.  We've seen a similar reaction several times-when he actually got to ride on Thomas the Train and when he got to ride the subway and the light rail.  Grandpa was worried that he wasn't having any fun, but I reassured him that the silent stares meant that he was just soaking it all in and having a ball.

When we actually went in, it was awesome.  We saw Shrek and all of the other characters, Evan and Jack rode down the ice slide (Benny refused), we were almost eaten by an ice dragon, and sat in an ice outhouse.  It was on such a large scale, but the detail was amazing as well.  So much fun to see!  Plus, we got to top it all off with some hot chocolate at the end to warm us up.  It was another great Bitler family adventure to finish a fabulous week.  We miss everyone already!

 (A view of one of the ice rooms complete with ice Shrek, ice walls, staircase, and slide)

 (Grandpa, Evan, and Ian in front of a large ice ogre)

 (Our family enjoys the ice scenes-or at least Ben isn't screaming at the moment.)

(Oh no, we're about to get eaten by an ice dragon!)

 (Our family discusses the mice-don't know why, but I really like this picture.)

 (The ice Shrek family)