Christmas in Delray Beach is un-be-LIEVABLE!!!

One of the questions looming in our minds when we moved here (well, “looming” may be a little bit extreme… :) was what Christmas would be like living in sunny Florida! Our family is fanatical about Christmas, so we knew that we would make it as Christmasy as possible, but it doesn’t really seem like a beach town in the upper 70’s would feel very much like Christmas at all. We were so wrong!!

On December 1^st, we brought the kids down to our very first real Delray event—the lighting of the town Christmas tree. The downtown area of Delray—which is the heart of the city—is home to the “Old School Square” where every Christmas, a team of volunteers constructs a 100 foot tall Christmas tree and builds a vacation home for Santa Claus to spend the holiday season! It is enormous, and more beautiful than you can imagine! They shut down the entire downtown, and we walked through the streets eating kettle corn, playing in the snow falling from a snow machine one restaurant set up in front of their shop, and listened to a number of live musicians singing Christmas music on the Avenue. :) I promise, it felt like Christmas. AND, if that wasn’t enough, Santa Claus was helicoptered in direct from the North Pole to settle into his vacation home right in the center of the town square. Did I mention the ice skating rink??? Yes, for real! Well, kind of for real…okay, it’s really linoleum, but kids rent hockey skates and slide all over it! Awesome!

Then, on the 10^th, we took our kids down to the “Family Day” back at the square…not only did they get their faces painted for free, but we actually played in real mountains of snow dumped there just for kids to play in for one day! Families had brought down boots and gloves and snow pants, and we saw real snow ball fights as Daniel and I took it all in in T shirts and sunglasses. Pretty fun! . At the end of the day, there was even a full-on Christmas parade with floats and marching bands and Christmas lights. :)

We have been so blessed by the little things that we didn’t expect but get to enjoy about Delray. It is such an awesome place to be at Christmastime. We also attended our neighborhood Christmas and Hannukah party where we got to meet a ton of neighbors and even make a few new friends! God is so good to us!

So, even though we don’t have frost or mittens this year, we are experiencing Christmas in a wonderful new way this year. :) So happy to celebrate Jesus’s birth here! Merry Christmas!