Christmas Traditions 2015

Last Sunday was one of the most anticipated days of the year for our family…the day we head west to St. Charles for the Christmas Traditions festival!

As we have for the last few years, we started at Llewelyn’s Pub for lunch:

We then stopped at the Gingerbread Village to see the creations and vote for our favorites (we even got to see the trophy this year!). I loved the Eiffel Tower, because it was both timely and beautiful.

We then saw the parade for only the second time ever…and this year, we even saw the whole thing!

I especially seeing all of the flags of the world:

Another first for us was seeing the cast skit, in the form of a game show. It was just as hilarious as you would expect!

The main attraction is getting as many character cards as possible. We did pretty well this year, finding all but nine of the 42 characters!

My favorite is always the Master of Revels, so I was very glad we got to see him, and hear him give out all the wrong holiday greetings (Happy Arbor Day in November?!?):

Another family favorite is Jack Frost…he always makes us laugh!

And even though I’m normally anti-Santa, I really love the Frontier Santa, because he’s exactly how I pictured the character when reading Little House on the Prairie as a child:

It’s always fun to see all of the decorations as you walk up and down Main Street:

We even saw a few humorous signs!

As always, I’m a little sad that it’s over for us already…but we always have next year to look forward to. One of these days, we may even collect every single card!

Greek Fest 2015

A few years ago, we went to the Labor Day weekend Greek Fest at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in St. Louis city, and had a lot of fun. When I heard that there was going to be a St. Louis county Greek Fest at Assumption Greek Orthodox Church this weekend, I figured we should probably check it out, too.

There was a ton of food:

Music and dancers:

A market, which featured lots of jewelry:

My favorite part, though, as was the case last time, was the church tour. The presiding priest gave a lecture about the history of the Greek Orthodox church, as well as Assumption’s church building, and he did a fantastic job. Even though I was already familiar with the Greek Orthodox church, I learned a lot, and so did the children (the words “Ottoman Empire” came out of Ladybug’s mouth on the way home, which means not only was she listening today, she was listening in school when we studied history this year, too!).

The church is beautiful. There are many icons, as well as stained glass, a few mosaics, and a beautiful copper baptismal font.

The screen between the nave and the sanctuary is both beautiful and interesting. Jesus and Mary are on either side of the royal doors, and flanking them are John the Baptist and the icon for the saint of the church, which in this case, portrays the Assumption of Mary. The other two doors have icons of the archangels on them.

I think my favorite part of the whole church was this beautiful icon:

This is a really fun cultural event, where you can learn a bit of history, a lot about religion, and even about food. The St. Nicholas Greek Fest will be held again on Labor Day weekend, so if you don’t have time to visit Assumption this weekend, I highly recommend stopping by St. Nicholas at the end of the summer!

An 1864 Christmas

Yesterday, we went down to the Old Courthouse in St. Louis to see what an 1864 Christmas ball would have been like.

It was a lot of fun! The dresses were beautiful, the dancing was fun (Turkey and Bunny even participated in a reel!), and the music was very energetic. It’s enough to make you wish that Christmas dances like this were still a popular activity!

A French Colonial Christmas

Today, after celebrating Christmas in Italy on The Hill, we traveled to the Jarrot Mansion in Cahokia to celebrate a French colonial Christmas. The house was decorated in a simple, but beautiful style:

There was a musician playing the hammered dulcimer, which really added to the festive spirit!

And, instead of a typical American Santa, they had Saint Nicholas, also the precursor to the French Père Noël, visiting with people.

This was a unique, and still very St. Louis, way to celebrate Christmas!

Christmas on The Hill 2014

Today was one of our favorite days of the Christmas season…Christmas on The Hill!

The first thing we always do when we get there is look for all the nativities. It doesn’t matter how many times we see them, we still marvel at their beauty, and the way they tell the Christmas story!

We stopped by The Hill’s version of a Christmas market. There were items for sale, crafts for the children, and something new this year…salsiccia. It wasn’t the salamites we’ve grown accustomed to over the years, but it was still delicious!

There was Christmas spirit everywhere!

And Italian spirit everywhere, too, of course!

Bunnys’ favorite part of Christmas on The Hill is listening to La Befana tell her story at Gelato di Riso.

I love looking at St. Ambrose, the neighborhood church…it’s so beautiful!

Any visit to The Hill is fun, but Christmas on The Hill is even better!

Christmas Traditions 2014

On Sunday, we made our annual trip out west to St. Charles for the Christmas Traditions festival. It’s the first time we’ve ever been there for the opening weekend, and it’s also the 40th anniversary of the festival, so there was a lot of extra fun to be had!

After an incredible lunch in the old vault at Llywelyn’s Pub, we stopped by the gingerbread village. As always, there were many amazing creations…I’m constantly surprised what people can make with food! We saw historic homes, a hobbit hole, Snoopy, Who-ville, and Olaf…something for everybody!

To celebrate the festival’s 40th anniversary, 40 ornaments were placed around Main Street and Frontier Park to represent the different Christmas legends you can find at the festival. We saw 30 of the ornaments before we had to go…it was a fun addition to our annual character hunt!

Speaking of hunting, we were reminded of this year’s Stl250 cake hunt when we saw the First State Capital cake, currently located on the sidewalk, instead of the backyard where we first saw it. There was something charming about seeing Father Christmas walk past it:

The children wanted to stop by the gazebo for a group picture:

Not only were we there for opening weekend, we were also there early enough in the afternoon to see the parade, which was another first for us. It was fun to watch the legends strolling down the brick street, and hearing the fife and drum corps play.

Even though Santa has no place in our home, it was fun seeing the Santas from around the world carrying their countries’ flags!

We collected cards from all the characters we could find. We got 29 of the 36 cards, and we saw all but one other character in the parade (I don’t think Civil War Santa was there at all on Sunday). This may have been our best year yet, and we saw all of our favorites, including the hard-to-find Master of Revels, the incorrigible Jack Frost, and Santa Lucia!

There was yet another special activity just for opening weekend…a Christkindlmarkt. For this event, there was a bonus character, the Christkind, who taught the children the first verse of “Silent Night” in German. While I was disappointed with the market itself, I was glad to see the traditional red and white striped tents, and the Christkind was an excellent addition to the cast of characters.

There is always so much to see and do in St. Charles, and we never get tired of the Christmas sights!

We make up our own cast of characters, so it was fitting that the children made their own trading card!

As always, this is one of the most looked forward to events of the Christmas season for our family, and with all of the special events going on, it was even more fun than we had expected!

2014 St. Louis Scottish Games

Today we took the whole clan on the train to Forest Park to attend the St. Louis Scottish Games. This was our second time going, so we knew what to expect, and how much fun we were going to have!

We met some really nice people!

As was the case last year, the children’s area was a huge hit with our bairns!

We made it by the British car show this time…I loved the WWII vehicle!

We saw some of the athletics, but not much.

And just a bit of the highland dancing.

We also saw some other demonstrations.

The children all loved the dog parade!

Not to mention the parade of tartans…we even witnessed a proposal, which was unbelievably sweet!

The children also loved visiting the tent of each clan and getting their “passports” stamped, while learning a bit about the clan.

And I, of course, loved the pipers!

I also loved all the Scottish pride everywhere!

It was a great cultural event, and I think the Scottish games are now part of our family’s permanent calendar. The children are already talking about going back next year!

Belleville200–The Beach Boys!

Tonight The Beach Boys played on the Belleville town square. The crowds were amazing…I think the entire town (and some of the surrounding area, as well), was there!

It was so much fun to hear them play…and I loved watching my children dance along!

This was the biggest event of the Belleville200 celebrations, but the weekend is just beginning…there’s plenty more to come!

Old Belleville Street Fair

A (fairly brief) storm meant that we weren’t able to spend as much time at the Old Belleville Street Fair (or, “Alt Belleville Strassenfest,” if you will), as we had planned, but we did still go down and walk around. We missed a lot of the demonstrations, as well as the tours, but we still got to see a lot of cool stuff, most of which we had never noticed before!

I was really excited to see the Garfield Street Saloon. My understanding is that it will eventually be a museum dedicated to the beer brewing history (Hello Stag beer!), that is such an integral part of Belleville’s history, and that was already evident, from the displays inside, to the brewing demonstration outside:

Something you don’t often notice in old neighborhoods is that there is writing on some of the bricks on the brick streets…fascinating!

The old houses (and learning who lived and/or worked there), were the best part of the fair. As a bonus, many of them had demonstrations outside, such as carpenters, brick masons, and even musicians (I do love an accordion!):

There was even a secret passage!

Belleville is a wonderful city with a fascinating (and long!) history. I’m so glad that our city’s 200th birthday celebration has created events that help us learn and appreciate that history!

Art on the Square 2014

Today was Art on the Square day! Belleville always looks so pretty during the art fair:

This year, there were cool cut-out stands placed all around the town square. Unfortunately, most of them were too tall for the children to reach, but they still look cool on their own!

I love watching the artists that are doing demonstrations. It’s fascinating to see how intent they are, and how much they love their work!

Of course, we stopped by to see our favorite artist, Mark Hurd, and buy a small print to add to our collection. Someday, we’re going to commission him to do a piece of one of our favorite places in St. Louis.

There were two artists from Belleville’s sister city of Paderborn, Germany, doing demonstrations. I thought this was a really cool way to celebrate Belleville’s 200th birthday…it’s certainly not something they’ve done before!

There are so many different kinds of art to see. I’ll be the first to admit, I don’t “get” them all, and certainly they aren’t all my taste. But, I love that we get to see it all, and talk to some of the artists. I also love that the children are getting exposed to so much different art. It’s interesting to see how their tastes have changed over the years (or stayed the same!), and what catches their eyes that we might not have noticed.