The three of us went to something called the Festival of Trees today, and it was the first time for two of us. Mom has been before, long ago when this was down in Atlanta. It was a charity event where trees are decorated and lined up for visitors to see and even bid on. There are wreaths too, plus decorations and gingerbread houses, and this year there were LEGO displays too. One of the deciding factors for us was the Pink Pig ride that was resurrected for this event, although it is certainly not the same Pink Pig as before. We'll get to that later, but it was actually a really nice visit overall. We enjoyed it!
Firstly, we got there at the Gas South Arena, where we were just about a month ago, although for different reasons - we were here for the rally last month, and now we were here for the trees. This is our first visit to the convention center. It's a larger room, and inside that room there were plenty of trees and all the decorations mentioned above. There were mini-trees and large lumbering inflatable Christmas characters too. Performers were dancing or singing Christmas songs on a stage, and there were places to make cookies or do crafts as well.
We just started looking around right away. We walked through the gingerbread houses and the Nativity sets to begin with, and then around to the decorated Christmas trees and the wreaths for doors. Many of them were super creative. Maddie was using the camera and I was using the one on my phone as the three of us walked through the trees. There were about three different Taylor Swift themed trees, and that got Maddie's attention of course. There were some Grinch ones too, and lots of shells and nutcrackers and all kinds of decorations and themes. It was nice just walking through. We went by and saw all the LEGO displays that people made up too, each one with a Christmas theme to it.
Making our way towards the starting point of the Pink Pig, we stopped by and saw some mini-trees, which were some of my favorites. And there was a pretty large collection of miniature buildings, making up a pretty massive Christmas village and/or empire. We stopped at the gift shop, and there we picked up an ornament that supported an orphanage in Uganda. It's a cross, and it's currently hanging on our tree!
The day ended with our ride on the Pink Pig. There was a pretty big line for the ride, but I completely forgot that I had purchased VIP tickets, which got us a special pin each, and essentially put us immediately at the front of the line. Wow! This was good because Mom was pretty much at the end of her stamina for the day - we hopped right on that train, and went for a little ride through the convention area.
It's not what it was at all. Previously, it was within a tent that was decorated and you were just in this other world of pink and pigs. And it was actually a train on tracks. Now it's one of those trains that you see in the malls, essentially an electric pink train that drove through right amongst everyone down the length of the convention center, past all the trees and wreaths and back again. There was one little tunnel of pink lights at the far end, but that was basically it. I think it's just the nostalgia of what the Pink Pig was that drove us all to go back and check it out, but if you were a first-time rider, you probably wouldn't think it was much different from one of those train rides at a mall.
Anyway, we got off the train, and that was about it. We got our stickers, and we have pins too. But it was time to get home. We spent a few hours there and it was nice, and we're all glad we went to see the trees. We were ready to come home though!
Getting home, we got some work done for KidPak. I've got a game set up for Sunday, and a few of the messages done for January's series. We even tried out some filming for KidPak. Mom and I watched "The Man Who Invented Christmas" again, as it is one of our favorites. We also saw "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer," because tomorrow we'll see it live. We also watched "Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas" because we should see Emmet tomorrow, hopefully. It should be a good day.
So yeah, we got to sleep tonight after reading some more from "Hogfather," and tucking everyone it. It was a good day today, and tomorrow will be a special one as well. Below are a lot of pictures we took today. The first batch are the ones that Maddie took with the camera. The second batch are the ones I took with the phone camera.
Check out the pictures Maddie took here:
And here are some images and maybe a few videos that I took with my phone!
No comments:
Post a Comment