Like many kids, Christmas was magical for me. One of my favorite traditions had to with our annual visits downtown to see the holiday windows. My mom loved special trips and so did I. We would sort of dress up and go down town. We would have dinner as a family. Next, we would walk down the sidewalk looking at the holiday displays. We always made a stop at See's Candy store where we could each get something special. You could pick out candy from those on display. You could have a cute box with sugary treasures inside. I usually go Honeycomb my mom tells me. Next we would walk to the May D & F or the Denver Dry Goods store. They were big department stores. Outside one of them you could see people glide past you on the ice skating rink. Inside we would make our way to the Christmas village where a large section of the basement of the store had been magically transformed. There were elves building toys, igloos with penguins, reindeer at play and so on. You'd walk along a pathway until you came to Santa's house where you could visit with Santa. You'd sit on his lap, tell him how good you had been, had your photo taken and sent away with a candy cane. Once that was done we would go and look at the wonderful windows. The air would be frosty, your nose would run from the cold and you could see your breath. The windows were decorated with bright lights and wonderful scenes from some story. Music would play. The scenes were rich and ornamental. I used to dream that I would someday create such wonderful displays, too. It made the season magical for me. However, times change. Stores close and cities remake themselves. I missed those traditions and wished I could have something like that for my own children. 
It seems that I was not the only one who missed that tradition. This year the Museum of Outdoor Arts, along with Cherry Creek North created such a display. I was enthralled. I went twice and had hoped to go again before it was taken down. The first time I went with a group of our family members to see it in the evening. I was excited so I took Connie, Christy and Ellie the next day. The experience was different seeing it in the daylight, but it was still magical. We too walked around and then stopped for some hot chocolate at Starbucks. We also found many lovely dogs to pet, as usual.
I thought you might enjoy the experience, too. You can see it on youtube.com and/or you can enjoy my photos I have posted here for your enjoyment.
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I also wanted to post a note to the people abroad who have recently left me notes. I have enjoyed receiving them. My account is set up to receive them, but I cannot email you back. If you are one of those folks, please know that it was a lot of fun to find that you are reading my blog. If you are one of the people who has a question for me, please post a comment again with the question and I will see if I can answer it. :)
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