It had been years since I had been to Tanglewood, and while I didn't remember it as being that spectacular, I thought it was something that Sawyer would enjoy and it would be easy enough to drive through even if we weren't feeling 100 percent yet.
Ray had a late meeting, so I put Sawyer in the car and headed to Winston-Salem to do some shopping for our angel tree recipients about 4 p.m. I was hoping the timing would be right to get in Sawyer's nap before we headed to see the lights.
The poor kid slept for about two hours in a stroller as I hauled him in and out of half a dozen stores. It was pretty cold, and he was very pitiful when he woke up. I was afraid my plan might be a disaster, but he calmed down when I offered to find us some hot chocolate.
We hit a Starbucks and both got hot chocolate, which he guzzled down in about two minutes. I really needed gas, and I needed cash because Tanglewood does not take plastic (so thankful I thought to check before we got there!). I wasn't really hungry yet, so I found a grocery store and picked up a snack and drinks for us both ... and got some cash.
By this time, we'd burned nearly an hour making all these crazy stops to get all my ducks in order. I blame the illness for my lack of coherent thoughts.
Photos taken with my cellphone so they're not great
We finally got to Tanglewood and started driving through the lights. Sawyer asked a million questions about them, but I was really having to "oooh" and "ahhh" to get much of a reaction from him. They are cool in a technological sense, which is probably lost on a 2-year-old.
Sawyer did like the reindeer leaping over the road, but asked WHY they were jumping over the car a dozen times.
A pirate ship ... not sure how that's Christmasy but OK.
Some of the coolest displays were the tunnels you drove through. They also have lots of motion-oriented setups. Like a golfer teeing off and the light ball flying hundreds of yards down the fairway.
As you drove through these bells, you could roll down the window and hear "them" ringing.
I had promised him we'd stop to see Santa, who was supposed to be at the gift village. We walked through the gift shop, which was tons of homemade crafts, jams, crocheted hats and the like. I did find a really cute Thomas the Tank Engine apron that I couldn't help but buy for Sawyer.
It was incredibly cold outside and I hadn't packed much in the way of hats and gloves because I assumed we'd be inside the gift shop or inside the car. But Santa and the pictures (which you had to pay for) were set up in a tent outside (lame). The line to see Santa was fairly long and Sawyer didn't act like he wanted to sit on his lap. We went back in the gift shop for a bit, and he changed his mind.
So we stood in line and he waffled on sitting on his lap. I think he really just wanted to SEE him up close. Finally it was his turn and the photographer and I convinced him to go tell Santa what he wanted. I picked him up and dropped him on Santa's and Mrs. Claus' laps and jumped out of the way.
Surprisingly he managed to get a decent picture of Sawyer. So I had to shell out the $10 to buy it on a CD (cheap compare to the Santa we've been to in the past and this Santa looked way more jolly). That meant we had to wait longer to pick up the CD. I was starting to fear it was going to be 10 p.m. before we got out of there.
Finally, it was ready and we hopped back in the car to find the gas light on. We drove around the the rest of the park and finally got to see the train.
The train lights were built around a real locomotive.
Hooray! The end!
I was eager to get back to civilization and get gas and food. But I took a wrong turn and we ended up in the middle of nowhere. I had a moment of freaking out, especially when this car pulled up beside me in a parking lot and asked if I knew how to get back to the interstate. She was lost, too. Luckily, my phone has GPS, so we made it back to town easily.
It was late, so I decided we'd grab dinner at Sheetz after getting gas. It wasn't the fairy-tale adventure I'd hoped for, but it was a memorable one nonetheless.
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