The houses in New England are built quite a bit differently than they are in Texas and as a result, not many put Christmas lights on their houses. A few put them on their trees, some on the shrubs, and even fewer still put out "lawn" decorations.
Our children look forward every year to finding Christmas light displays at the neighboring houses. Whenever we are driving around at night during the holidays, they always want to look for Christmas lights. This year was a little difficult.
There were two good houses fairly close to us. One that had the lights synchronized to music which the kids loved. It was very well done We stayed there for probably ten minutes. And one other that we went back to probably four, maybe five times.
This house had Everything. You name it. They had it. Grinch. Snoopy. Mickey Mouse. Baby Jesus. Frosty. Rudolph. Pooh. Carousel. Hot air balloon Santa. Spongebob. They even had a LIVE Santa Claus handing out candy canes and listening to the kids Christmas wishes. This was the boys favorite part. Brock must have asked a dozen times to go back to the Santa house. The owner said it took him over 400 hours to set it up.
But as far as truly great Christmas light displays like we are used to, not anything even remotely close.
So of course, Tony looked on Google.
And he found Bright Nights in Springfield, MA which is about 45 miles west of where we live. Other notable highlights in Springfield are the only Six Flags in New England and the closest On the Border. Neither of which we have been to yet.
So we loaded up the kids one night before Christmas for a mystery adventure. And off we went. But first we had to find a McDonalds. And you would think, that should be easy, right? Ah, no. Not when they are all on the other side of the turnpike with no way to get to them. So we kept passing by all these McDonalds with two toddlers screaming, there's one! Turn around! You passed it! They don't reason well yet. We drove over thirty minutes out of our way just to find something that is supposed to be on every corner. Oh McDonalds.
When we finally go to Bright Nights, we were all in for a wonderful surprise.
The town of Springfield turns a beautiful park into a drive thru light display. They have different themed areas that are sure to delight everyone in the car. A nativity display. An ice wonderland. Dr. Suess Village. An Animal Park. Dinosaur World with a volcano. Santa's Workshop with Santa himself. Reindeer jumping over the road. Beautiful town reflected by a pond. Candyland. Toyland. And the boys favorite a train loaded with candy.
The boys still talk about the train almost everyday. They ask if we can go back and we have to tell them the decorations have been put away until next year. They tell me at random moments the candy train is put up in the closet now. And we can't go see it.
This was truly a wonderful memorable night for the whole family.
