Annmarie Gardens

Trying to keep up with the Santoki's, we are working hard to fit in our five Christmas activities before the big day. Our first was Christmas on the Square in Leonardtown. Our second was The Festival of Trees at Leonardtown High School (too lame to warrant a blog post). The third was our frigid morning cutting down the Steffen Family Christmas tree at Friendship Forest. And we just completed our fourth, an outing to Annmarie Garden and Lights.

Annmarie Sculpture Garden & Arts Center is, as the name suggests, a sculpture garden and art center. Imagine that! Their outdoor sculpture garden walking path plays host to the local annual "pay $5 to come see Christmas lights" festival. Previously, we have gone to the zoo for such events, but with the nearest zoo over an hour away, Annmarie figured there was a market for an exterior illumination extravaganza down here.

If I was to judge the lighting display alone, I'd give it a 3/10. It was a walking path lined with themed scenes, made mostly from light-bright-like displays of Christmas lights mounted in pre-drilled black painted sheets of plywood. There was probably a grand total of 25,000 imported Italian twinkle lights. But when you factor in Audrey's experience, it was a solid 9/10. Despite the fact that it was extremely cold and past Audrey's bedtime, she was a giggling fool the whole time, pointing out all the objects she recognized (elephants, balloons, fish, etc.). It only took 20 minutes to do the full walk, but that was the perfect amount of time for Audrey. Any shorter and she would have wanted more, any longer and she would have been bored.

We are starting to have more and more "Remember last year when..." nostalgia moments now that Audrey is over a year old. Tonight was a big one. The first picture below is our 14 month old little girl mesmerized by the lights tonight at Annmarie's and the second is our little 2 month old last year asleep on Kelly's shoulder at Hogle Zoo.

Art: The little lights aren't twinkling
Clark: I know Art, and thanks for noticing.