December 16th, 2021

Upfront I have to say that I have no idea who those two people are standing in front of Giant Santa, which is why I have blurred their faces.  I was waiting for them to walk away to take the picture but they stayed and stayed and stayed and......    I got tired of waiting.    

Last weekend we headed to a small rural town to attend a very old fashioned and very cute Christmas Event at a place called Farmer Mike's.  This place is very cool.  There is a huge farm market that is their regular gig. But on holidays that pull out all the stops and celebrate!

We were greeted by Giant Santa!  What a fun way to start :)  And there was a lot more fun to be had.  There was, of course, a lot of kid-centric stuff.  Of course!  It's Christmas!  Who loves the holiday more than kids?  Other than me I mean. I'm just a big kid after all

One of the coolest things they had was a snow machine.  So literally cool.  For Florida kids it was a wonderland!  They might never have experienced real snow.   They had both a big giant pit of "snow" for them to play in and a little hill to slide down.  They were having a blast!  

Sorry about photo quality. I didn't bring my camera so this are cell phone photos.  You get the idea.

I could have just stood there and watched the kiddo's experience snow the entire evening.  Takes me back...way way way way back.....to being a kid and playing in the snow.  I can remember all of it so vividly.  Making snow forts and snow angels, having snowball fights, building snow people.  I remember the smell of wet mittens drying on the radiator in the house, the almost painful tingling of fingers warming back up, forcing my feet into rubber galoshes and then the struggle to take them back off,  the scarf wound and tied 'round my face and the smell of breathing air through the yarn.......  Of course there was none of that going on here in Florida!    

There was a lighted maze to walk through that had the largest collection of blow up Christmas decorations that I've ever seen!!!  The path was outlined with lights and dotted with giant snow men and reindeer and Santa's and Elves and every other Christmas themed blow up you can imagine and then a few others!    In roughly the middle of the maze on a huge platform was real Santa waving to everyone as they walked by and greeting us with a hearty, jolly, "Ho Ho HO", as one might expect from Santa.

Inexplicably they also had some sort of day glo paint ball course offered up.  In the full dark that you only find in the countryside anymore, it would have been a challenge for sure!  People were excited about it though and lining up before it was ready to roll!  I bet they had fun.  We opted out of that particular experience.

The movie, "Polar Express" was playing on a giant screen set up outside with rows of various sorts of seating lined up for people to sit and enjoy.  I was very temped to pull up a hay bale and join them.  But instead we moved on to one of the next very fun things which was an enormous fire pit circled by more hay bale seating.  Time for S'Mores!  Woohoo!  

There is nothing quite like having a gooey hot sugary sweet s'more outside while smelling the smoke and listening to Christmas music.  Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the Christmas music.  It played the entire time and you could hear it no matter what distant corner of the farm you were in.  It was mostly classic and old favourites and I knew all of the words to all of the songs and sang along.  Of course I did.  Don't you?    Hey, when Elvis breaks into Blue Christmas and Burl Ives starts up with Holly  Jolly Christmas or Eartha Kitt begins purring Santa Baby, you have to sing along. I think it's a law.

There were all sorts of bouncy houses and complicated looking slides and photo op set ups that were bringing people to the party and some sort of BBQ food truck with enticing fragrances wafting throughout.  Everyone was laughing and smiling and having a great time.

Our last stop was the hay ride.  Tractor pulled and strung with lights,  a load of strangers perched on yet more  hay bales as we rocked this way and that, some of us singing along, (that would be me and the little kid sitting across from me) as we were pulled through the very dark night, pointing out the stars in the sky above us.  

It was a great evening, a Christmas Event a little different from some of the other ones we've attended, but a great one nonetheless.  It brought back memories of simpler times and Christmases long ago.  Ain't nothin' wrong with that.

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