It's a Christmas Miracle!

We went down town to the year tree lighting ceremony. It starts with Santa riding down the street in a wagon, then they light the tree and then it starts to "snow". I am really missing some snow right now so I really wanted to go see the snow.

Here was a pretty Christmas tree.

Beautiful flowers in November

Paul by some more flowers.

Here is a street view of the festivities. Notice the dark clouds moving in.

I had to take this picture to show the crowd there- rich, old people. Naples is mostly retired people. There is a ton of money here. The Naples area has more millionaires per capita than any area in the United States. It makes it interesting driving down the street and seeing all the cars. Lexus is like the bottom of the line here. I didn't know what a Bentley or Maserati was until we moved here. I thought Bentley must be a guy and Maserati was his girlfriend or something.

Paul and Kyle with a nutcracker.

This was one of the many wine tasting tables. There was a LOT of alcohol there- but not like cheap beer. It's all fine wines.

After a while it started to downpour. Everyone stood under the awnings- except my kids. They were out playing in the streets while everyone watched.

Here is one of the lamp posts with a machine that is going to shoot out the "snow". I was so excited to see what it looked like!

Paul playing in the rain- for like an hour while we waited.

Here are my friends Megan and Jillian waiting under another awning. Hoping it will stop raining- it never did.

Kyle and Joselyn playing in the rain.

Me-I got wet going from one awning to the other.

Finally! We waited at waited for the snow and it came! It was actually bubbles- but looked pretty real.

Eventually we gave up trying to stay dry and played in the snow. All the lamps posts along the street sprayed the snow and it looked awesome. Just like home, except 85 degrees.

More playing in the snow.

Paul in the "snowy" bubbles.

Ellie- we ended up having such a great time! It was pouring rain the whole time, but it was warm and my kids loved it. As we were walking back to the car in the rain, I walked down the street looking like a drenched rat! A man came running up to me and said- "Are you pregnant? Here take my umbrella!" I said, "oh, I'm fine, I'm already drenched." He handed it to me and ran away before I could say another word. It was very kind of him- it is nice to see some chivalry. And now I own a very expensive umbrella:)