Winterhaven 2014: This Time, We Brought Grandma

For the last several Decembers, our family has traveled to Tucson to see the beautiful holiday lights of the Winterhaven Festival Of Lights. In a nutshell, Winterhaven is an older neighborhood in north-central Tucson, many of whose residents elaborately decorate their homes for the holidays. For several nights each December, the streets are closed to traffic and visitors are permitted to stroll freely through the neighborhood and feel the holiday spirit (as well as marvel at some of the creativity and ingenuity of many of the decorations). As you can see by the picture above, this is a tradition that has been going on for fifty years now!

 

For the first time, our family was a little bigger the night of our Winterhaven visit. For the 2014 festival, we took Grandma Barrett along for the ride. We wanted to share this tradition with her, and she wanted more holiday activities to keep her occupied this Christmas season. Nathan's sister Kelli and her boys were originally going to come with us, but their arrival in Tucson was delayed due to illness, so it was just our immediate family and Grandma.

Here are some highlights from our 2014 Winterhaven trip:

This was a "green" house, which used all solar-powered lighting and decorations made from recycled products. I actually thought the final result was quite beautiful, if a bit difficult to photograph.

Probably the girls' favorite house...the "Disney Princess" house, now with characters from Frozen!

 

The girls take their picture with the "Claus family"

 

 

This home always decorates their front facade to look like a gingerbread house. It's one of my favorites; so cute!

Of course, there was an all-Frozen house as well! 

Hanging out with "Ralphie" from A Christmas Story

Another Disney-inspired house; the whole front yard was turned into the Finding Nemo aquarium

All things considered, it was a fun, successful evening. It had been a fairly warm day, so we weren't too cold walking around. Sandy was impressed by all the creative light displays and the holiday excitement. As usual, all the adults had fun watching the children's reactions to all the beautiful decorations.

Grandma Barrett on the right, playing "elf" with the girls

The only drawback was that it started getting very crowded and noisy in places, and more crowded overall as the night wore on. We ended up not seeing the entire neighborhood (although I'd guess we walked more than half of it) because everyone was getting tired and/or claustrophobic. Maybe one of these years we'll do the whole thing! But at any rate, we still enjoyed ourselves; and we warmed up with a treat from Culver's on the way home afterwards. Next year, we will have to remember to go on a weeknight. Now it was time to gear up for Christmas Day.