TWINKLE...TWINKLE...Christmas STAR!

This year will be Kamden's 3rd Christmas! He is at the age now where he is starting to know what is going on and he has become very excited for the holidays over the past few weeks. Over the past little while he has learned what Santa and Snowmen are all about, and most importantly who Jesus is! Of course, he is not old enough to understand all of the concepts yet... but to here him say and point out all the aspects of Christmas is a joy to our hearts.

To get in the holiday spirit, we packed a picnic dinner and snacks and headed out for some good ole' fashioned Christmas light site seeing! We did this last year with him, but this year was really a blast! He kept saying, "wooowwww and wooooaaaah" and when we would drive away from house to house he would yelp, "get me out and more!" to see more lights.

Since we moved to South Florida, things are a little "different" than the holidays back home in North Carolina. For starters, finding all the best houses decorated with Christmas lights the local news station and newspaper update address and pictures so you can map out your route in advance. Well, that is what we did and it was much easier this year. We hit up every top notch house around. They were decorated with hundreds of thousands of lights. I know people used to decorate at home, but these floridian folks go "all out". They set their lights to Christmas songs, like the videos you see on YouTube. I asked one man how long it took him to get it all set up and he said just hanging the lights outside took 4 weeks and about 48 hours per song to coordinate the lights with the 14 different Christmas songs. Some houses even had them set up through the FM radio stations so you could listen along in your car while driving by.

I would say more people decorate down here because it is nice and warm outside this time of year. It's been in the mid 70s-80s for the past few weeks. If we were in North Carolina trying to hang lights, you would expect 30 degree weather and possibly snowing! The weather is the one thing down here that has taken some getting used to. It doesn't really seem like Christmas when you are wearing shorts in December and seeing Palm Trees instead of Pine Trees. Despite the change of scenery, we are really loving our first holiday season in Florida. It's more motivating to go out and enjoy holiday festivities when it's nice outside. The best part so far is seeing baby Kamden's reaction to the Christmas lights. We drove around for over 2 hours and he still couldn't get enough. It's memories like these that last a lifetime and truly make the holidays extra special.