Yesterday was one of my favorite days of the year…we drove west to St. Charles, MO, for Christmas Traditions!
This year was extra special, because our favorite Christmas legend, Jack Frost, is celebrating his 20th anniversary at the event. Coincidentally, that’s just about the same number of years we’ve been attending! I was really glad we got to be there for him at this momentous occasion!
Yes, Jack is the star of the festival to us. But there were still plenty of other things going on, starting with the Santa parade:
It was COLD (thanks Jack…I’m guessing the coldest it’s ever been when we’ve attended!), but no matter the temperature, historic Main Street is beautiful and full of Christmas cheer!
We saw plenty of other Christmas Legends while we were there:
And of course we visited with my personal favorite, the first legend I remember encountering at our very first visit all those years ago, the Lord of Misrule and Abbott of Unreason himself, the Master of Revels!
We also encountered a new musical group, The Confectionettes, who represent Edwardian candy makers, and also a new (to us at least…I know we’ve never met him before, but I’m not certain he’s new to the event this year) Santa, Viejito Pascuero from Chile:
This is truly one of my favorite events of the whole year, and I really cherish each time all five of the children are able to attend together!
We have had a very exciting few days, because Bunny graduated from Western Kentucky University with a Bachelor’s Degree in history!
The actual commencement was on Thursday night, and began with the “Topper Walk,” the students’ final walk across campus as undergraduates:
The ceremony was held on the football field, and we got really lucky with the weather…even though there had been storms around the area all day, all we ran into was a few sprinkles, and it wasn’t even hot!
I was impressed with how organized and efficient the whole process was, and I definitely shed a few tears along the way!
Following the ceremony, we stopped by the “Big Red Bash” on the South Lawn…the highlight of the event was seeing the host himself!
On the way out, we saw Cherry Hall aglow in WKU’s signature red:
We were back on campus yesterday morning for the recognition ceremony for Bunny’s college…the Potter College of Arts and Letters. This is the event where each graduate’s name is read, and they receive their (fake) diploma.
Bunny received a special honor, which was worn in the form of a medal..the Top Scholar of the College!
This was another very organized event…they clearly know what they’re doing!
After we located Bunny, we took lots and lots of pictures, staring with the traditional grad and parents photo:
And then we walked around campus, taking pictures in all of Bunny’s favorite locations, plus a few I wanted to add to the list:
Bunny loves WKU!
One last stop outside the Alumni Center, which is now Bunny’s center, too!
Bachelor of Arts in History
Tourism Minor
Summa Cum Laude
President’s List
James H Poteet Award for “Outstanding Potential in Teaching and Research in History”
History Undergraduate Research Conference Presenter
Richard Troutman memorial prize winner for best overall paper at HURC
A.M. Stickles Award for a senior history major with an outstanding record of academic achievement
Richard L. Troutman Award for a senior history major with an outstanding record of academic achievement
Top Scholar of the Potter College of Arts and Letters
What can I say about the 50th anniversary of our favorite Christmas tradition?
We have been looking forward to this day since last year’s event. We knew it would be special to be part of so significant a milestone, and we weren’t disappointed. We were there in time for the parade:
We always enjoy hearing the Lewis & Clark Fife & Drum Corps play:
And then the hunt for the legends of Christmas. Let’s face it, Jack Frost is always our number one priority…(we even brought along our binder of character cards from past years, and had him and some of our other favorite characters sign it).
And the Master of Revels is a close second (he was actually the first character we saw, and the first to sign our binder!).
We found a good number of the other characters…by my count, we saw 25 out of the 33 characters/groups:
I especially enjoyed meeting the Christkind while wearing a dirndl!
The Evergreens are a fun group, and it was especially great to hear them sing “White Christmas” since they look like stepped right out of Wallace and Davis’ act!
There was a special display (hosted by none other than Father Time!) in the Tourism Center looking back at the history of the event, and collecting memories for a time capsule to be opened in another 50 years.
It was a beautiful day to be in St. Charles…I will never tire of the historic charm of the city!
Our Christmas tradition:
I am so glad we starting attending this event around 20 years ago, and it’s pretty cool knowing we’ve been part of it for almost half of its run…here’s to making more memories for the future!
“Each year, the Great Pumpkin rises out of the pumpkin patch that he thinks is the most sincere. He’s gotta pick this one. He’s got to. I don’t see how a pumpkin patch can be more sincere than this one. You can look around and there’s not a sign of hypocrisy. Nothing but sincerity as far as the eye can see.” It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
There is not a pumpkin patch anywhere that is more sincere than the one we got our pumpkin from this year, because the pumpkin patch was right in our own backyard!
“He’ll come here because I have the most sincere pumpkin patch and he respects sincerity.” It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown
As evidence, here is a photo I took that captured the Great Pumpkin (Harold, our friendly yard bunny) right before he rose (sproinged) out of the pumpkin patch (this was the second time that happened…the first time, I didn’t see him in there, wasn’t expecting it, and he scared me half to death when he jumped up!). He liked to hang out there in the shade of the leaves throughout late August and early September.
So about our pumpkin patch. Every year after Thanksgiving I toss our pumpkins that we picked at the local pumpkin patch into the backyard so they can return to the earth. And most years in the spring and early summer, pumpkin plants start growing, and sometimes even flower. In the end, though, I usually mow them over at some point when I’m doing yard work. But when Bunny planted a small garden near where I had tossed them this summer, I decided to leave them alone and see what happened. These are the first two pumpkins we harvested early in August:
We had tossed some mini pumpkins out there last fall, but I’m also notorious for growing exceptionally small plants, so we had no way of telling if they were supposed to be the size they were when they turned orange. We do think that even though they were all small, we might have had two different types of pumpkins, because in total we harvested two regular shaped pumpkins and two that are fairly oblong (with one still growing on the vine…we’ll see what it turns into if it stays healthy).
And then one day, Ladybug and I found this pumpkin growing on one of the other plants (in addition to different shapes of pumpkins, the leaves on some of the plants were noticeably different, too), and by the time we noticed it, it was already larger than the ones we had harvested…and it also had a neighbor! We weren’t really sure what it was, because its shape was different still, and I was thinking it was a squash of some sort, because last year, we picked something that looked rather like a butternut squash. We also weren’t sure it would survive, because its flower had remained attached for what I thought was too long, and I was worried it had caused the gourd to rot.
After removing the wet flower, and letting it dry in the sun for a few days, it became clear that no harm had been done. We made sure to water it daily (because we really haven’t had much rain in the last month or so), and occasionally we even rotated it so it didn’t develop too much of a flat spot on one side.
It kept growing…a lot. It seemed like you could literally tell a difference from one morning to the next! Chickadee wanted to make it a “milk pumpkin” like in Farmer Boy to see if that would make it grow even larger, but we have far too many cats that wander our neighborhood and yard for that to work.
I don’t know why the lighting here is so weird (perhaps it was a cloudy day), but it finally started turning orange, and filling out to a more standard pumpkin shape, so we were fairly convinced that we were really growing a regular size pumpkin!
I was a little worried about it along the way. When its skin was still soft and bright green, I dinged it with my fingernail, and part of it peeled off. I was sure that was going to be the end of the pumpkin, but it grew more skin over the blemish. Meanwhile, its neighbor, which had been bigger all along and presumably healthier because it didn’t have its skin injured, died on the vine. Growing stuff is weird, and I had no idea what I was doing!
Anyway, despite the injury, it kept growing and turning orange, and I was really hopefully we might get to harvest it.
Yesterday when I checked on it, there was very little green left, and even though it’s still early in the season (possibly too early for it to last until Halloween, let alone Thanksgiving), I decided we’d go ahead and pick it before any bugs or pumpkin diseases got to it. You can even see its “scar” from the fingernail incident here…it’s amazing how healing nature is!
A successful harvest!
I bought a bag of Ghirardelli milk chocolate pumpkin spice caramel squares as a prize for whoever came closest to guessing the correct weight. It weighs a whopping 12 pounds, and Moose won the contest with a guess of 12.7 pounds (no, we didn’t score it The Price is Right style, but I did consider it).
Bunny has one of the small pumpkins that we picked early in August at college…here’s the remaining harvest to date:
And so, that is how we came to have the most sincere pumpkin patch in town, maybe even in the whole state! We may just have to give it a try again next year and see if we can repeat our success!
I was thinking to myself the other day how funny it is that over half of my children are now in college, and they’re going to three different schools in three different states!
This year, Bunny had “a very merry (20th) unbirthday” a little early due to family travels. But having an unbirthday is still fun, especially when some of your gifts have an Alice in Wonderland theme!
Bunny has a pretty standard birthday dinner at this point…Bayou Queen Punch from Entertaining with Disney and Stromboli:
This year’s bunny cake was inspired by Genji from Animal Crossing…I wasn’t totally thrilled with the shade of brown I achieved for the ears, but at least he has a pretty simple face to copy!
Even though it was a dark, rainy day with lots of local flooding (it’s a good thing we hadn’t planned to go anywhere, because we really couldn’t have!), it was a very merry unbirthday celebration indeed!
It’s February, which means it’s time for our favorite made-up holiday, Bobunk! This year, we didn’t just celebrate with dinner out…we had a Bobunk trip to visit Bunny at college!
One of the things she was most excited to show us, and that I was most looking forward to seeing (other than her, of course!) was the college library. We started with a treat from the coffee shop just across the bridge into the main library, which also meant a stop by the historic basketball court, still in place following the building of the current stadium in the 60s:
The we visited the library proper. Nine floors…can you imagine?!? I couldn’t believe the sheer number of books, and I loved seeing all the cozy little study and collaborative spaces throughout the different floors!
The view from the top floor is as amazing as you’d imagine:
I always enjoy seeing the art installations around the campus:
And the lovely views in general:
We even ran into Big Red himself!
It wouldn’t be Bobunk without a special meal, so we went to one of Bunny’s favorite restaurant, Slim Chickens, which I really enjoyed. I tried the chicken and waffle, and the waffle was even heart-shaped!
And for dessert, we got Shamrock Shakes at McDonald’s:
It was a really fun weekend, and a great way to celebrate Bobunk!
