Saturday, November 19, 2011

Tree Lighting!

Every
year for the last
4 years we bundle up the
kids and head to downtown for
the annual tree lighting festival!
The downtown area is decked out for the
holidays! There is live music, beautiful light
displays, and a TON of people! The first place we
always head is to see Santa and Mrs. Clause! Zachary
always comments how pretty she is!! This year there were
animals! They had a reindeer and a camel! The kids got to pet
the reindeer, and Zachary kept asking how they could fly!! So I said
if you believe in Santa then reindeer can fly! And that seemed to answer
his question!
(how do you like my tree?!!)

The reindeer would just stand there and let hoards of people pet him! He/she was really cute and very fluffy!

Zachary was so excited to see Santa, and as you can see, Santa was trying to coax Ryleigh with a candy cane. So when we left Zach mentioned that Santa didn't ask him what he wanted. So I told him since Santa is magical, he always knows what you want, if you are a good boy!

As you can see we were pretty bundled up! Each of us had on at least 2-3 layers! No one complained that they were cold and Brynn was a champ!!


Down by the depot they always have this huge rope light display. It's Pooh Bear and piglet on a train!

Another fun thing that they have is a "Thomas the Train" free train ride for the kids. The cars are water barrels with a little wooden seat inside.

Madison chose to ride in the very back by herself!

Zachary loved that Ryleigh rode with him! They are pretty good buddies!

After all the fun stuff we took a walk around the walking paths and foot bridges. They said that there were 400,000+ lights that were used!! It's pretty amazing.
They have these little light displays and figures of bears and penguins We thought that this one was pretty funny!

Madison and Zachary were "warming" their bums by the "fire!"

On our way to the car we ran into Sparky the Fire Dog!

And the whole reason for the evening!! The enormous tree! It was grown locally in Wilder, Idaho. It is usually a multi-colored but this year they went all blue!!
We just love this time of year! If you have a chance and you live in the area go for a walk downtown! It's cold but so worth it!!

3 comments:

Robert and Kristen said...

I would love to see all the lights! Carly will love the pic of Piglet and Pooh!

bgsorenson said...

Sounds like a fun evening. We will have to go take a look at all the lights! Yes, I did like you word tree. It takes talent to make some thing like that!!

Kam said...

Oh, Ann! You're making me sooo homesick. We did the "lighting" party last year... Nat was only 1 1/2 months old! (She LOVED it. ha!) You'll have to clue us in as to where Santa is, and where the awesome bucket train is... we missed that last year. But we're hoping to be back for it NEXT year.

btw. I LOVE your word TREE! So very clever and artsy. Keep 'em coming!