WE ARE STARTING A NEW CHRISTMAS TRADITION FOR OUR LITTLE ONE
Although our little man is still little, we are trying to start on the right foot for his childhood to be memorable. We have such a small family and they are scattered.
This used to be a bit sad during the holidays until very recently. We understood everyone has their own traditions or extended family to spend time with and instead of making things difficult we decided to spend our holidays together, making memories with our number one. We celebrated Christmas with each of our families ahead of time and on Christmas, we took off on our new tradition, travel.
THE CHRISTMAS CAPITOL OF TEXAS
Since it was a bit of a last minute decision we decided to to do something close to home. A few searches on where to go during Christmas in Texas will lead you to Grapevine, Texas. Why Grapevine? It’s declared to be the Christmas capitol of Texas that’s why. I don’t know if that is an official title or if there was a vote. I don’t know if the title is true but it was a cute and relaxed Christmas for us, that alone will say that I give them an award of some kind.
GRAPEVINE, TEXAS
Let me tell you that Christmas is all over this town.Every store, corner, park, and alleyway has Chrismas decor all over it. I have never seen so much Chrismas decorations all together, ever. Maybe on the reality shows where they compete, but never in person.
From all my research on it, I came across a few websites that had Grapevine on their list. Wide Open Country, stated that Grapevine loved Christmas and Trips to Discover told me about Gaylord Resort.
Neither of them told me not to go to Grapevine on Christmas day. Which was super important to us.Everything was closed, as in Main St. which is where most of the Christmas activities are were all closed. Not one store or restaurant open. Plus you know hubby had a few on his list to try. This leads us to …
GAYLORD, RESORT
Now, this is a place that KNOWS how to do Christmas! If there was a more modern place where Santa wanted to spend time in the South, I would say he would pick the Gaylord. It’much that Christmas in this place. If I went back to Grapevine it would be to explore the Gaylor Resort even more.
We are usually not the resort type of people, at least before baby, we weren’t. We were avid explorers who took every surprise and ran with it. With our little one, we need a tad bit more structure and predictability. Let me tell you that the Gaylord won us over. I think the entire town was there as well since there was no other place to eat open. The Gaylor had their seven restaurants open. Great for us and our Chrismas dinner, which was an all you can eat Tex Mex food, in their San Antonio recreation, riverwalk and all.
THE REASON WE WERE THERE
Our little one does pretty well on road trips, I want to say because we started him young. But it’s also because we plan short distance trips, or we stop a lot on the longer ones.
Our little man was the only reason we were there, to start our new tradition for his Christmas, so it was all about him. If he wanted to relax, that’s what we would do. He did, we arrived at the hotel and hubby turned on the tv, football was on so that is what our little football fan wanted to do. We relaxed and watched football.
Then after that little time out, we took off to explore. From beginning to end this little boy of ours was intrigued with this hotel. There was not one place, high or low that did not call his attention. There were lights, Christmas trees, life-size toy soldiers, a river, a gingerbread house, trains and so many more things. If we adults kept ooo and aaaa everywhere, I can’t image what was happening in his little mind. We tried to go to Main St. when it was dark since we read that the main square is the most lit. We saw a crowd and many of them taking photographs despite the very cold weather, however, our little bundle had enough, sound asleep. He slept through that night. A sign of all the fun he had.
FIRST CHRISMAS TRIP WAS A SUCCESS
I know that it was supposed to be about Grapevine, but since we didn’t really experience it and we loved the Gaylord, it turned into a Gaylor Resort review.
No matter that Grapevine was mostly closed for Christmas, we loved our Christmas. We were together, our baby happy and we had a drama free holiday. What more could we ask for? Well, maybe some delicious bbq from Woody’s Smokehouse in Centerville on our way to Houston.