Another Neat Thing About California Christmases

In California, people with lots of money who live by the oceans not only decorate their homes (like we saw last year at Long Beach), they also decorate their boats.

The Hollands told us about this, and we decided we needed to witness this unique Christmas tradition.

But California tried to stop us; it blasted everything with the worst weather it could muster.  Luckily that is only rain and a bit of wind, so I puffed out my chest and showed off my "country girl" roots and said we could handle anything.

After hearing the show was cancelled, then on, then off, then finally definitely on, we trudged through the rain to see the million-dollar light job on the multi-million dollar boats.

 Before the show started we took shelter in a Mariner's Museum ... and look who we found!  This was a fantstic Santa; the second one Mac had seen, and the only one whose lap he would sit on.  Yay! 
 We flew back outside at the sound of the siren, and Janae saved us some spots under a little canopy.

 The wind turned out to be quite fierce, and not as many boats showed up.  But the ones that did were amazing!  But I kept thinking, "I could've gone to Fiji with the money they put into those lights." 

 Seth loved the boats and kept yelling, "Boats, boats!"  Lindy told him all about them.

 After we guessed it was over, we went and explored the Mariner's Museum some more.  They had free ornaments out that you could glue and paint and whatnot.  I was quite excited; I've been wanting to start the tradition of buying a new ornament every year that sums up what you did that year, but every decoration I liked was a bit more money than I was willing to spend.  But you can't top free.  A Christmas miracle!

 We explored the museum for quite some time.

Mac loved these little portholes.  He kept running back and forth between them.

Mark and Mac's first fishing trip ...

After warming up a bit we shuffled back to our cars and drove home, soaked with rain but happy as could be.