Yankee Candle Village

The Yankee Candle Village in Williamsburg is such a cool place. It is so much more than a Yankee Candle store.. There is a home store, a candle store, an entire Christmas shop where Santa comes to visit and it snows inside, a toy shop, a fudge shop, a general store, a cafe and more. There is an indoor courtyard where live music plays and the lighting makes it seem as though you are outside at dusk. Ellie actually thought we stepped outside for a minute. There is a giant clock with a Christmas countdown on it. It was a lot of fun. We were there during a Fall festival. There was a clown making balloons, a petting zoo, and hay rides. The kids had so much fun. While I loved looking at all of the holiday stuff, I only wish they would have had some stuff for Chanukah, too, but they did not. Oh well, we still had fun!

Look closely, and you can see it snowing inside the store!

Princess Ellie and Sir Max!

Hay Ride

Making Wax Souviners

What better souviner from Yankee Candle than your own wax creation? Ellie and Max each picked out their own wax sculpture and then got to dip them into colored wax however they wanted. Ellie picked out a wicked witch (for Halloween) and dipped her into pink, purple and blue wax. Max picked out a pirate ship (he's very into pirates these days) and dipped it into blue wax. They had a lot of fun and thought it was a very cool project.

Meeting Santa

Did you ever wonder what Santa does when he's not at the North Pole? He's hanging out at Yankee Candle Village! He is there most days during the year, except on Sunday's. Ellie was a little disappointed that he wasn't there and said she wished he would come. Because it was the Fall Festival, he was there! Ellie was so excited, she said he heard her wish with his magic ears!

Max was showing Santa his wax pirate ship that he helped dip. Santa said it was so good it could have been made in his workshop!

Petting Zoo

As part of their Fall festival, Yankee Candle had a petting zoo in their parking lot. Ellie and Max had fun seeing all the animals up close.

Busch Gardens

Every year, CJ gets free tickets to Busch Gardens for being in the military. We decided to go last weekend and participate in "Howl-o-scream", Busch Garden's haunted, Halloween celebration. It was very cold--we had to buy hats and gloves when we were there, but it was a lot of fun.

Getting measured to go on the rides.

The Clydesdales

Getting ready to watch the 4D Sesame Street show. It was fun to watch Max try and grab things in front of him!

Dino Land

Max loved going up this giant net bridge. Ellie was not so sure! It took a lot of convincing to get her to go up, but she did it!

Daddy and Max waiting for Ellie. She took her time and went up very slowly, but she eventually made it to the top.