Seaman

Christmas Traditions 2019

On Saturday, we enjoyed one of our favorite Christmas traditions…the Christmas Traditions festival in St. Charles, MO!

It was so much easier to enjoy the event this year, without my ankle being broken. (Although the day was not without a foot injury…more on that later.) For example, we actually got to see the gingerbread houses this time, and they were spectacular…it was hard to choose a favorite!

We also enjoyed our walk down beautiful, historic Main Street, which always looks so nice at Christmastime!

We saw the entirety of the Santa Parade:

And the hoopla, in its new location behind the Tourism Center:

We also attended the Land of Sweets Gumball for the first time:

And caught up with some of our favorite characters, including the Master of Revels, who we missed last year:

And of course Jack Frost, who let Bunny sit in his cart…they even pretended to run down Susie Snowflake!

We also saw one of the Seaman dogs, all dressed up for the holidays!

We collected 25 of 39 character cards, plus two of the five bonus cards, which seemed a bit slim to us, but we still had a great time!

Anyway, the only downside to the day was me stepping on a thumb tack slightly before we left. It went through the sole of my boot and into my foot, which felt great. As I was due for a tetanus shot anyway, we hit the Minute Clinic on the way home so I could get that taken care of, just in case. What a dumb thing to have happen, but I’ll take it over a broken ankle any day!

Going to the Dogs

Remember how much fun “Cakeway to the West” was?!? I loved the public art scavenger hunt that celebrated the 250th birthday of St. Louis. You can imagine my excitement, then, when earlier this year, I heard that St. Charles, MO, home of many of our family’s favorite memories, was going to be celebrating their 250th birthday in a similar fashion, with 3-foot-tall sculptures of Lewis and Clark’s dog, Seaman, displayed around their town! When we were in St. Charles for Legends and Lanterns over the weekend, we found several of the dogs:

My favorite was the one at the Embassy Suites and St. Charles Convention Center, and it wasn’t because it was the location of my second place win in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch apple dessert contest, but because it had an American highway motif:

I don’t know if we’ll have the opportunity to see more of these sculptures before the year is over, but I’m really happy we visited the ones that we did!