Luminaria and the Llama

The Christmas Eve Luminaria has been a special tradition for my family since we moved to Oregon in 1988. One of the neighbors came by when the weather turned cold and gave my parents a cool little piece of paper that explained about the Luminaria and invited us to join the entire neighborhood in this festive showing. And when I say the entire neighborhood, I mean this literally. So we bought our plain white paper bags and our votive candles. We put a little scoop of sand at the bottom of each bag, placed a lighted candle right in the middle and watched as the sun went down and the Luminaria began to glow. Then we all got into our Christmas jammies and went for a drive around our little neighborhood. We were AMAZED!!! With the exception of about 4 or 5 houses, every stretch of sidewalk and all the driveways were filled with glowing bags. We drove for a mile or so through the winding streets near our new house and just OO-ed and Ah-ed. I think we all fell in love with Luminaria that first Christmas in Oregon. Later, our pajama-clad drive on Christmas Eve became more to see the Luminaria than the Christmas lights viewed shortly afterward. I've told Kevin that no matter where we end up, we will carry on this tradition.

This year my parents took us on our Christmas Eve drive to see Christmas lights. Noah was so excited! But first we took our drive to find the Luminaria. Sadly, there are only a few houses that have kept with the tradition. I think mainly because people move away or just can't put them out for whatever reason. But I will always remember those Christmas Eve's when Dad would say that we needed to do extra bags so that we could do the sidewalk across the way because Mrs. Hunter was too frail to do it herself, etc. We were happy to do it. I can't wait for our first Luminaria at our very first house. :)

Here's what they look like as the sun is setting. We're getting ready to light the candles...


Dad and Mom playing with fire!


I LOVE this picture. You may need to click on it to enlarge, but if you look closely you can see my dad in the background crouching down and lighting candles. (Sniff....)


This is Gram and Noah viewing our handy work.


One of our favorite places to view Christmas lights on Christmas Eve is a neighborhood called GreyStone Court. It's an older and very POSH collection of gorgeous homes in West Medford. Some could even say that it's Hoyty Toyty! But I think it's lovely... I believe that the whole neighborhood has a professional team come in and decorate for Christmas. It's really cool to see. And then a few years ago they started to collect cans of food for the local foodbank as people would drive in and through to see the lights. Way to put popularity to good use! And you would not BELIEVE the lines of cars that wait to turn into the court to see the lights. It's insane. We actually learned to park about a block away, put the babies in strollers and leashes on the dogs, and walk down and around the court. Much better!

Here are a few pictures:


And finally... While we were walking through... We saw Santa Claus, Mrs. Claus... And a LLAMA.

You heard me.


Noah snagged a candy cane from Santa and waved at Mrs. Claus. I was a little relieved when he wouldn't go near the llama... you know... spit. E-hem.


And lastly - Here is a picture of the line of cars (coming from BOTH directions) that were waiting to turn into the court. Once again, I was glad that we had walked. Although there was one year when my parents rented an SUV limo for the lot of us plus extended family to drive around the valley and view Christmas lights. And it was something ELSE to see the limo driver maneuver that thing into Greystone and back out!

Don't worry... We donated to the food bank.


Looking forward to the next Luminaria,

Nicole
@>->--