The Lighting of the Christmas Tree

Here in Kalgoorlie, they have a tradition that the last Wednesday in November is the Lighting of the Christmas tree ceremony.  They shut down the main street and a bunch of vendors and volunteers set up booths all along the street with food and activities for the kids to do, and most of it is free!  And if they do charge money it is for fundraising purposes.  It is really cool.  Santa Claus is there and Mrs. Claus and a bunch of other cool Christmas characters.  We had so much fun and the girls came home with a bunch of new fun crafts that were all free!

Here are the kids after their first craft, making necklaces.  I got Will this balloon at the very first booth we went to and it saved my life.  It kept him very happy until Cory could meet us there.

 Here are the girls making their necklaces.

 Here are the girls painting their ornaments.

 It had rained that morning and it was quite cool in the evening so it even felt Christmasy to me!  Everyone else was complaining about it being so cold, but I was loving being able to wear my boots and long sleeves!

 Here is Lily writing her own letter to Santa, sporting the hair clip she just made at another booth.  When did she get so big?

 Here's Lily putting her letter to Santa in the fancy North Pole mailbox.

 Haha, trying to get a picture of all three, but that balloon is always in someones face!  I don't care, that balloon was still the best thing I ever bought.

 We ran into Rudolf and an elf.  I'm still not sure if these guys were volunteers or just people who decided to dress up.  There were lots of people just attending who were decked out in Christmas garb.  I'll have to remember that next year.  :)

 Here were the performers that the girls loved!

 Another character.  Ava was too afraid to stand by him.  Haha!

 Here is the giant snow globe with actual snow in it.  Ava and Lily wanted to go in so bad, but the line was always way down the street.  I just couldn't justify it.  There was so snow floating around in the air behind it though.  It was magical.

 Ava and Lily got their hair spray painted.  Ava's was green and yellow and Lily's was gold.

 These awesome boys were making balloon shapes for kids all night long for free.  Love the one looking, he saw I was going to take a photo and he posed for me.  I asked them if their fingers hurt and they were like yeah.  And the posing boy was like yeah, and we're doing this all for free.  Pretty amazing.

 The girls loved these gingerbread men walking around on stilts.

 This one is trying to talk to Ava and Lily, but the girls were so giggly he had a hard time having a conversation.

 There was a count down at the end and the Christmas tree lite up in all it's glory and then fire works were set off.  It was quite exciting.  But what was even more exciting is that we lost Ava at this very moment.  It was so scary.  But luckily a really nice mom found her and helped her find us.  Phew! That's what I get for taking pictures instead of looking at my kids.  So glad she got rescued.  

 There's the tree all lit up.

I thought it was a pretty fantastic way to kick off the holiday season.