Candlelight Christmas

This holiday our family tried out something new, we spent an evening at This is The Place park's Candlelight Christmas.  It was honestly so much fun, everyone, of all different ages, loved it!  The whole park is decorated for Christmas and each pioneer house has an activity for guests to do.

I know this picture is blurry but I was amazed at the beautiful view of the city you get while at the park and Zoo Lights really looked all decked out this year, I wish I had had time to go to that fun Christmas experience as well.  There is always next year.

We began our evening by taking a fun little train ride to the top of the park so we could make our way down through the park and hit all the houses.  It was a fun little ride, they had Christmas music playing and it was fun to see all the houses trimmed with Christmas lights and decorations as we chugged past them.

Our first and favorite stop was the social hall where we received dance lessons.  Our family had a ball and all 17 of us spinned around the dance floor, switching up dance partners and just having a grand old time.  We had a hard time moving on to the next house but we only had a couple of hours to cover the whole park, but we definitely created a lot of fun Christmas memories.

We spent a lot of time at the fire pits along the path, the night we went was absolutely freezing so standing around a fire felt fabulous!

Our next stop was a silly little Christmas puppet show about why santa has reindeer pulling his sleigh.  The kids seemed to really love the performance.

The little ones really wanted to meet the puppet cast after the show, Thomas especially liked them. (PS I was having major camera issues so that is why they are kinda dark and grainy ..... you can't win them all)

Patiently waiting....

Across from the social hall was a live nativity.  We found the shepherds warming up by the fire and they informed us that baby Jesus was sleeping.  So they let us take pictures of them to represent the nativity and we moved on to our next event.

Our next stop was signing the naughty or nice list in the Relief Society Hall.   All the kids made sure to get their name on the nice list and received a candy sucker.  All the adults had heard that the naughty list signers got better candy so we all took turns adding our names to the naughty list and received a handful of coal (yummy chocolate!).  When Nora saw that her mommy and daddy had signed the naughty list she got extremely and sincerely upset.  She full heartily believes in the naughty and nice list and could not fathom that her parents had willingly put their names on the naughty list.  They told her they still had a couple of days to change their ways and make it back on the nice list and that seemed to calm her down a little.  I love that girl, she is so funny. 

Ricky made sure that everyone could see sweet Karin's name on the naughty list haha, so when it was her turn she made sure Ricky's name was nice and big as well.

The little ones enjoying their "nice list" suckers.

A couple of Santa's reindeer were there visiting.  I love reindeer I think they are such neat/awesome/cute/huge/cool/fuzzy animals.

Then we stepped inside and discovered that Santa himself was there taking some last minute requests. This santa was one of the coolest Santa's I have ever seen, I just loved the unique fur trimming on his entire outfit, the style of his hat, the style of his coat, his authentic snowy white beard, just everything about this santa was so great.  He was also such a sweet and tender santa, the way the real santa is I am sure.  He had cute conversations with all the kids and generously gave out tons of candy canes to everyone.

We ended the evening by exploring the magical gift shop.  I found a package of the coal we had received for signing the naughty list, I thought it was so funny and wanted to get some but I didn't know who I would give it to, but I know where to find it for next year if anyone is mean to me over the course of this next new year...

We had such a fun night I think this might have to be a permanent addition to our family Christmas traditions.