Since having birthday activities instead of gifts worked so well last year we decided to do a Christmas activity instead of gifts as well. The kids do plenty of chores and earn their own money for the toys that they want. These fun memories will last a lot longer I think.
We started talking about what activity they might want to do for Christmas waaaay back in the summer. We were originally thinking of going to a Trans Siberian Orchestra concert together (suggested by their guitar teacher), but decided that the kids were not old enough yet. We made a big list of ideas and kept whittling it down until finally we decided to go to Hershey Park's Candy Lane. They have a ton of fun Christmas activities and the park is all decked out with lights.
We met Santa and told him our Christmas wishes.
We visited real live reindeer in their stable. My favorite part was talking to their keeper about what they eat (grain and some beet sugar for treats), how often their pen needs a full cleaning (weekly), and when their mating season is (Oct/Nov just like regular deer). I also learned that they shed their antlers every year.
We met some Hershey characters.
We watched a short musical (35 minutes) in their big theatre called "The Littlest Christmas Tree". It was stellar.
And then of course there were all the rides. Last time we went to Hershey was about 4 years ago. I sat around holding Miss L a lot and Brother S was too small for many of the rides (mostly did toddler rides).
This time all the kids were able to ride most things.
They enjoyed the fast scary rides -- big change from a few years ago when these would have been too scary.
We got some big treats while we were there too. We read
this review when we were trying to decide which activity to choose for Christmas and she mentioned these king size milk shakes. The weather was not ideal for milkshakes, but it was an experience not to be missed.
We also followed her advice and got two of the endless refills hot cocoa mugs. We shared them amongst ourselves and refilled them at least 6 times.
Laff Track
We also did some ice skating at the Hershey arena.
We visited real live reindeer in their stable. My favorite part was talking to their keeper about what they eat (grain and some beet sugar for treats), how often their pen needs a full cleaning (weekly), and when their mating season is (Oct/Nov just like regular deer). I also learned that they shed their antlers every year. 
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