Tree lighting fun at Club V

From about 3:30pm until 4:45 or so there were activities for the children to do such as ornament making, face painting, and pin the nose on Rudolph. There were pictures with Santa and an area where Mrs. Claus was reading Christmas stories to the children near the fireplace. Near the time when the tree lighting occured, everyone filtered outside and (5pm) there were children singing and the high school band playing. They sang a couple of cheery Christmas tunes and then right before the tree lighting they dedicated a song to the fallen soldiers, injured and those away from home and then they sang a sad song which made the whole crowd get teary. It goes to show you that as a military family, we are lucky to have these cool things to do and yet our lives are always peppered with the reminders of fears and loneliness and the pain of sadness for the fallen soldiers and families of them.

After the tree was lit and a few short speeches (even Santa couldn't get cheered up for his speech after that) they opened up the parking lot near the theater where there were a few vendors with hot spiced wine, cocoa and chestnuts roasting. They also had horse carriage rides! Everything was free... I guess morale, welfare and recreation paid a flat fee to the local vendors for them to come. We didn't personally stay for carriage rides, the lines were long and it was a long day for Ann-Marie. But we had some cocoa and chestnuts.


Can you tell in Ann-Marie's pin the nose on Rudolph picture above, that she's peaking? I didn't realize it until I saw this picture and then I asked her. I guess I just thought that she had some innate sense of where Rudolph's nose should go. The lady who is holding her blindfold knew it, by the way she is laughing in the pic.