Down here in Texas we have various multicolored Santa programs. They are basically holiday toy drives conducted by various groups (Blue Santa=Austin PD/FD, Brown Santa=Travis county Sheriff and FD, there are others as well). I’m not sure if this is unique to central Texas, but it may well be. I’d never heard of it before we moved. Here is a recent article in the Statesmen about their current troubles with donations.
This year the Blue Santa program was giving horse-drawn carriage rides (a year round staple in downtown Austin) in exchange for toy donations. I read about it in the paper and thought it sounded fun. We arrived shortly after it started expecting there would be a line. Typically a ride for 4 people would be about $60 per half hour so it was really a pretty good deal. But when we arrived at the downtown fire station we had a carriage waiting for us. Maybe the cold weather had kept the people away.
It was a pretty chilly night and we bundled the kids up. Earlier in the day Amber had taken Jillian and Wesley shopping and had tried to give Wesley a Santa hat to wear for the ride. But he refused saying something along the lines of “No. Santa will give me a Santa hat.” So magically a gift bag complete with Santa hat was waiting for us on the sidewalk when Wesley got out of the car downtown. It is amazing how easily they believe. He was sure it was from Santa, wore it proudly, and never had a single doubt.
We toured around downtown hitting the highlights including Sixth Street, Congress Ave, and the Driskill hotel. We were pulled ably by a Red Belgian Draft horse named Clay. He was friendly and let Wesley give him a few pets on the head at the end of our ride. Jillian spent most of the ride yelling “Neigh!” and trying to jump from the carriage. It was rather cozy the four of us cuddled together underneath a red velvet blanket.
Afterwords we drove up Congress to see the Capital tree and then headed home. The strings of lights in the picture, which look all white are actually new LED lights the city is rather proud of. They’ve been touting their energy efficiency for a few weeks now. And in truth they are very neat. They change color, play patterns and in general look nice when viewed down Congress Ave.
Tags: Austin, Blue Santa, Carriage Ride, texas
That’s right. We got snow. The first in several years for Austin (though they did have some rather large ice storms a couple of years ago). What makes this even more unusual is that on the 9th, the day the snow fell late in the evening, it was 81 degrees. A record high. By the time the snow started falling just before midnight we were at freezing and getting some lovely flurries that I woke Amber up to see.
It wasn’t much, a quarter inch is probably generous, and it had mostly melted by the time the kids got up, but Amber got a few shots of them before they were too cold and had to go in.
And here is Jillian doing her best to clean up the deck. She is very fastidious.
This will likely be it for as long as we live in Texas. I came home after my morning run to play with the kids, but it was much less impressive in the daylight. No snowmen. Oh, well.
As is our new Texas holiday tradition we headed down to Zilker Park for the lighting of the “tree”. We first enjoyed the enormous yule log fire and then counted down as they turned on the lights. Once the crowd thinned down underneath the tree we headed inside to do some spinning. The photos look a little blurry because of all the people walking and spinning, kicking up the dry Texas earth.
I started with Wesley in my arms and spun him around and around as he stared up at the lights. After just a few rotations we met Steve Albert, KVUE reporter, and his cameraman, Woody. They asked if we’d like to be filmed and we said sure. By the time they had gotten all set up and had me mic’d up I was spinning Jillian around and Amber was getting Wesley dizzy.
Jillian loved the spinning even more than Wesley. She would get this mellowed out zombie look and go limp. When I stopped she would sit up looking all dizzy and then ask for more. As I say so eloquently in the video I don’t think she would ever have stopped on her own accord. And I must admit it is rather dazzling looking up at the lights.
They filmed us for a while, asked me a few questions (and to my defense I was rather dizzy and not thinking straight), and then told us it would be on at 10. We went home, eventually got the kids tucked in and sure enough the Zilker Tree Lighting was their top story. I managed, with some effort, to get a copy of the video off their website. Feel free to skip ahead to about 1min 25sec.
And yes a few people at work actually saw us on the news. I was in the elevator with Jack today and he said “Hey I saw you on the news!”
After dinner on Saturday 12/6 we walked down to the Wells Branch Homestead for their annual visit of Santa and luminaries. The trails around Katherine Fleischer Park are lit up with hundreds of beautiful luminaries.
Luminaries
Santa was visiting from 6-9. We got there right at 6. Good thing, because this Santa was a talker! He was really sweet with the kids, but the line moved VERY slowly! When we were done, there were about 50 people in line.
Once it was our turn, we started with Jillian.
Not a happy girl!
As you can see, it did not go well.
I like Daddy much better.
Joshua rescued her and then it was Wesley’s turn.
Say Santa!
He knew exactly what he wanted to ask Santa for. Two books – one about dinosaurs and one about penguins and Candy.
Talking to him about books.
Then we wanted to try to get a picture of both of the kids with Santa…
This time was not any better.
Santa gave each kid a small candy cane. Wesley and Jillian were both very polite and thanked Santa for the yummy treat.
Next it was time to ride the “train”. It is a sweet man who drives a tractor around that pulls 7 “cars” that are made out of 50 gallon drums.
Goodbye Mom
Both kids enjoyed the ride. Jillian was very sweet at the end of the ride and was giving Wesley hugs.
After the train ride we went over to the community center where they had hot chocolate, cookies, and a few snacks. We ate them outside at the playground then walked back to the stroller.
Still eating their cookies.
We then walked around the trail to see the luminaries. We also walked around a couple of houses that had a lot of decorations. There was even a sweet man, who had a ton of decorations in his yard, outside in his driveway passing out yummy hot chocolate and cookies.
Looking at the snow globe with a penguin inside.
Wesley was so sweet – he said goodbye to all of the decorations. It was a good thing we were on a short block. He made us laugh when we were on our way out of the neighborhood and Wesley said, “they even had bats!!”
Wesley sees a bat - we see an angel
It was a wonderful way to spend a Saturday night!
Tags: Christmas 2008, Jillian, luminaries, Santa, Wesley