How Floridians do Ice

I hadn’t planned to post again after the fitness giveaway until Monday to take an official break…but our Christmas turned out to be quite lovely and I had to share. Knowing that I was having a little trouble feeling in the spirit, I started thinking of what would help.

Step 1: Christmas Eve we went out among the hoards of crazy shoppers. I think since we really had nothing important to buy or do we just laughed and enjoyed the people watching.

Step 2: Christmas lights!!! Probably one of my favorite traditions from childhood is driving around to look at lights. Orlando did not disappoint from the ornate décor, to the bachelor who tossed out a rope of LED lights and hoped for the best, to the old school designs. David loves the palm trees that are all wrapped up in lights and I concur!

Step 3: ICE Exhibit – I’d been hearing about the ICE Exhibit at Gaylord Palms Orlando for awhile, but truly did not understand what we were in for until we entered!! Every bit of this exhibit (minus the floor) is made from hand carved ice sculptures. The colors were brilliant and the details simply incredible!
We noted online that they would provide parkas…so being people who notoriously underdress we assumed that would be enough. Right…it was 9 DEGREES and we had no hats or gloves. After a few minutes, I had my hands so far in my jacket I couldn’t hold my purse, at which point David hung it around my neck so he could go do the ice slide.Truly I was loving all of the details, but starting to fear frost bite {not sure that’s possible} so we dashed out to a warming area for a bit before heading back in to finish seeing everything. Here we saw one of the sculptures updating a piece because they evaporate at a rate of 1 cm per week!
Fun facts:

• 310 hours of art direction
• 2,000,000 lbs of ice for one show
• Highly purified water is required to make the completely clear ice sculptures
• They start freezing the ice a year in advance
• It’s trucked in from 3 different ice factories around the US
• While they give you parkas, bring your own gloves and hats!
• It’s 9 degrees in that room!! David says I look pained in this photo, which is because I WAS…but worth it!

Step 4: Poolside – How many years did I wish I was at the beach or somewhere warm for Christmas?! What on Earth am I doing now wishing to be else where, that’s pure insanity. So we enjoyed our luck at having been transferred to Florida by heading to the pool after our chilly encounter to read a book and sit in the hot tub.

Step 5: Christmas Vacation, Home Alone, A Christmas Story – yup all were watched and enjoyed over the last couple of days while cuddling with our furry friends.

Have you ever seen an Ice show?! Hope your holidays were great!
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Gratitude Journal
Dec 28
I am grateful for numb fingers as a reminder that I in fact have fingers to feel and lots of fantastic gloves to start using!