Tim McGraw at the MGM Grand

Lex and I had a trip planned to Disneyland to enjoy all of it's magical Christmas decor and festivities. We discovered Tim McGraw was playing a concert at the MGM Grand the weekend before we planned to go to Disney. It was fate! Tim and Disney?? Two of my favorite things?? Yes please! I drove down to St. George the night before the concert to meet up with Lex and spend the night at her place. When I got to her house, we went and got peppermint milk shakes at Chick-fil-a and drove around looking at all the best "dressed" houses. St. George definitely brings it's A game when it comes to decorating for Christmas!

This was our favorite houses, we jut did slow drive bys at the other houses, but this one I had to get out and walk around it to appreciate all of it's amazing decor.

Then we went back to Lex's house, got in our comfy jams, cuddled her adorable little dog, Chester, then headed to bed!

When we woke up, we had a nice leisurely morning, then we packed up the car and were on our way to Vegas. Sweet lil Chester desperately wanted to come with us, I wanted him to come as well! But alas, he needed to stay home. So we said goodbye and hit the road.

We got to Vegas in time for lunch at Grimaldi's, home of our favorite pizza in the world! Then it was back to our hotel to get ready for our evening with Tim!

We had floor seats, but they were back row floor seats. During the opener, Chris Janson, we could barely see a thing so we decided to test our luck and find some closer seats. While Tim's band was setting up, we found a couple of seats on the 10thish row and sat down and waited for people to come kick us out of their seats. However, no one ever came! So we got to see Tim up close and personal!

Tim was having such a great time, he was talking a lot more than he usually does at his shows and he was being so silly. His mom and sisters were in the crowd, along with several of his friends so he kept making jokes to them and was having a blast all night long. He also kept making reference to how he had been gaining weight because of all the Christmas cookies he had been eating and how his show clothes didn't fit him anymore.... Tim, we could still see your six pack through your shirt, you're still as ripped as ever, enjoy them cookies!

Such a fun night!!

Guiding Santa to City Creek Mall

City Creek Mall sure knows how to kick off the holiday season! They have a big evening full of all sorts of fun Christmas activities. The evening began with a huge crowd guiding Santa to the mall with glow sticks!

We all sang Christmas carols and waved our glow sticks in the air like airport traffic controllers , and in a burst of fireworks, Santa appeared!

V was completely mesmerized by the glow sticks

Then the whole crowd moved down to the opposite end of the mall for performances of selected numbers from Ballet West's The Nutcracker.

Next up were brand new holiday themed fountain shows!

By now Vienne was freezing, she has a serious thing against gloves and her hands were turning into iceicles, so the Madisons said goodbye and headed home. I wasn't quite ready to be done having fun yet (I had literally spent an hour and a half in the parking structure trying to get a parking spot, so I was going to make sure I made it worth it!)

I got a caramel apple from the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory and walked over to Macy's to see their candy windows.

While I do always enjoy seeing the creativity of the candy windows, and I am so happy they brought them back after so many years without them, I miss the days when the candy windows were giant displays of entire scenes. Growing up I remember seeing scenes from fairy tales made completely out of candy and being enchanted with them. The modern ornament idea is fun, but I wish they would break away from it and move more towards the original candy window concept.

The sponsor this year was Sinclair gas, whose motto is, "fueling your next adventure" thus all entries had to include Sinclair's iconic dinosaur mascot. Dinosaur's and Christmas are hard to mash together. I know all of this because it has been a dream of mine and Bethy's to create one of these candy windows and we actually got around to submitting an application this year. Bethy drew up an amazing and creative concept and sent it in with our application. She got a call and was asked in for an interview. She said the interview went extremely well and the interviewer seems very impressed with her idea as well as her very organized plan of action for creating our candy ornament. We were super surprised when her design didn't get picked. However, now that we know the process we will definitely be submitting more designs in years to come! I was also glad I knew why there were dinosaurs on all the ornaments, otherwise I would have been super confused, I overheard tons of people discussing why there were dinosaurs and how random it was.

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