Lafreniere Lights (and Snow!)

The Christmas party that was supposed to happen at our house last Thursday afternoon unfortunately got rescheduled. That left us with nothing to do that night. But when Kenny unexpectedly returned early from being gone all week for work, I decided it was a perfect night to take the boys to look at Christmas lights. So, after an early dinner, the four of us piled into the car and headed to Lafreniere Park.

There’s a short driving tour that you go through first…..

…..and then you can get out and walk around to see more lights if you want. It was a great night to be out there; it wasn’t too cold but there definitely was a nip in the air. Rory had fun running up and down the ramps of the bridges, and Riley’s favorite display was the big green dragon in the lake that he kept calling the Loch Ness Monster. Funny kid.

We came back across the main bridge and walked around to get a really pretty view of the lights from across the water. Love the colorful reflections.

There was a high school band performing on stage when we were there, and Riley correctly identified the music as songs from Frozen. We spotted a grove of little Christmas trees across from the stage, so we wandered through and noticed lots of paper ornaments hanging on the trees. Any kid could decorate an ornament, so Riley colored a candy cane and hung it on a tree right before we left.

It wasn’t until we were back home and I was putting Rory to bed that we realized we didn’t have Tiger. Uh-oh. He didn’t like it, but Rory went to sleep without him. Then while Kenny put Riley to bed, I drove back out to the park with all of my fingers and toes crossed that Tiger was somewhere in the parking lot. He was. He had fallen out of the car and was laying right next to the spot where we had parked earlier. Whew. Another crisis averted.

We found ourselves back at Lafreniere on Saturday morning for another fun outing: Snow Day in the Park! We did this with Riley a few years ago and decided to try it again this year with both boys.

We brought along a few trucks, and Riley had a blast pushing his snowplow around in the snow ice and filling up the bed of it.

Rory whined about standing in the snow ice at first but eventually got more comfortable with it and even filled up the bed of his little dump truck.

 

We ended up staying at the park for almost two hours, and it was close to lunchtime when we left. Since it was such a beautiful day outside, we decided to drive out to Dat Dog for lunch. During this insanely busy time of the year, it was really nice not to have a structured day and just spend time together as a family.

I’m not sure we’ll have many more chances to do so for the rest of the year…..2014 sure is going out with a bang.