Meeting the Reindeer

On Christmas Eve Eve we finally made it to the oh-so-anticipated Reindeer Festival at Swanson's nursery. It was chilly outside and in our haste we forgot Fiona's hat. Lucky for her she looks adorable in Rick's BYU hat.


I think she knows it.

The Reindeer Festival consisted of a camel named Curley and a minature donkey named Moe. I think this was my first time seeing a camel. Pretty cool!

And of course, there were reindeer...Dasher and Blitzen to be specific.

Sadly, Gwen forgot to bring a letter to the reindeer. You know, the one reprimanding them for making fun of Rudolph? Well, that didn't stop Gwen from scolding them. Through the fenced she called out to them, "Hey, you shouldn't call Rudolph names- it makes him feel bad!"

Yeah, I'm thinking it definitely worked. See how his head is bowed in shame?

The best part about seeing the reindeer was the opportunity to hand feed an apple slice to them. I secretly really wanted to feed one too, but there was about a 25 year age gap between me and the rest of the feeders.

The nursery also had an awesome koi pond which greatly amused Gwen. I thought they were going to climb right out of the pond and take a bite out of her.

Just when we thought it couldn't get better, we happened upon a train set. Talk about a perfect day for Gwen. We watched it for about 20 minutes and had to tear her away from it. What is with this girl and trains?

A few weekend before, Santa had visited the nursery. The sleigh they used for pictures was still set up and we took full advantage of it.

On the way home we stopped by Larsen's Danish Bakery, which was recommended by a friend. You know a place is good when the line is almost out the door.

Rick was a little intimidated while ordering because there wasn't a menu and very few of the items were labeled with a name. The employees were a bit "no nonsense" (that's my nice way of saying rude) and weren't much for wasting time trying to figure out what the customers wanted. When Rick tried to order the cinnamon roll he was immediately corrected by the person helping him. "Oh you mean the________?"(Fill in the blank by something impossible to pronounce). It happened to him each time he tried to request an item. Everything had a scandinavian name. The only thing he wasn't corrected on was the "frog-looking thing" that Gwen begged to take home. Apparently "frog-looking thing" was it's official name.

Everything we got was completely delicious and worth the soup nazi-style abuse. Well, everything was good except for the aforementioned frog looking thing. But really, who would expect something that looked like that to taste good?

A new tradition was born...I'm really looking forward to doing this same exact thing next year...minus the frog!