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One of our Christmas traditions that we have carried out since the children were quite tiny is one of going out in the car on Christmas Eve (yes Eve) and riding around looking at the Christmas lights while enjoying some home-made delicious hot chocolate and hot baked bread. Every year, my sweet and loving wife prepares both items for the annual outing on Christmas Eve.
This tradition is loosely based upon one that my family (as a child) enjoyed back in Memphis. We would drive by Harts Bakery (a bread company no longer in business as best I can tell) and for 25 cents, the attendant working the conveyer system would take a hot baked unsliced loaf of bread off the conveyer and hand it through a small window to you. My favorite part - the CRUST! It was wonderful to eat that bread and ride around looking at Christmas lights! What a great childhood memory. So, pretty much without exception, we have observed a similar tradition with our kids since they were young and now that nearly all of them are in their early twenties - we still do it!!! LOL
Well, just to show you that the wonder and joy of Christmas is still alive at any age, we did it again this year and we found a wonderful Christmas display to see as tipped off to us by my sweet niece Brooke. The house belongs to a family named Larsen and it is by any standards, a mansion. I would estimate it to be 6500+ square feet in size! Apparently they own a landscaping company and business is good! It sits on a large plot of land near the city of Elburn, IL, and looks somewhat like a castle.
Here's a picture of it by day - beautiful! Note: the driveway has embedded lights in it that provide a means to see the driveway at night (like a run-way!)
What makes this house and its Christmas display so neat though is that the house is practically festooned with lights all over the house and yard and the lights are well choreographed to music. In fact, a large sign in the yard tells you to tune your FM radio in your car to a specific channel so you can enjoy the music in full stereo sound. Then you sit in your car and watch the spectacle. That is truly the right word for it too - it is a spectacle.
I recorded the video on my little Nikon hand-held camera (not a video camera) so please pardon the camera motion and the poor sound quality but you will get the idea from the video. You can also find other videos of the Larsen home on YouTube by looking for the keyword: larsenlights
So, now without further delay, I share with you here one of the videos I captured when we visited their home on Christmas Eve, 2008. It shows the amazing and very enjoyable display the Larsen family have put together and you can hear my family expressing the joy of Christmas and incredulity that someone would go to this much trouble to make Christmas a bit more special. Very cool by any standard... Enjoy.....
5 comments:
That really is cool! I would love for Lauren to see that! She really enjoys Christmas lights.
It was amazing all the different things those two largest trees in the front could do. Of course my favorite was Carol of the Bells. It is nice their family can provide that for the whole community to enjoy.
Thanks for sharing your special evening!
You are most welcome. It was indeed very nice. We hope to visit it again before they shut down for the season!
Their web site is something to see too!
http://www.countywidelandscaping.com
Super cool! She told me about the trip1 great to get to see!
Amazing number of man-hours went in to this extravaganza! Not only did this guy design the complex display, someone put up all the thousands of lights, provided power and computer coordinated presentation, plus a local area FM broadcast plus a website for more info. I guess his employees were doing something other than planting bushes the past couple of months. Despite the fact you were using a handheld digital still camera, the video is quite good.
Yes, it is amazing how much time it would take to set this up (and tear it down). On the radio station he says he and his children do it but I suspect they have help. It was pretty cool and I too was surprised at how well the camera recorded it considering the conditions (shooting through windshield, Mark fidgiting in this seat causing van to shake, sound coming from radio, etc! :O)
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