To kick off Christmas festivities I took the kids to the Greenwich lantern parade and tree lighting.  Greenwich is easy to get to from the kid’s school so we left straight from there.  It gets dark so early that the lantern parade was at 4:30 in the afternoon.  We had trouble figuring out where exactly we needed to go to see the parade but once we did it was fun to watch them go by.  The lanterns were all made by local school children, but I couldn’t get very good photos.  

After the parade passed by us, we worked our way to Greenwich Market, where the parade would finish and they would light the tree.  The kids got a little impatient because they couldn’t see what was going on at the front, but as soon as someone started a countdown they got really excited and everything lit up.  

We bought some treats at the market, and a balloon maker made Mim and Simon an Elsa balloon and a Rudolph balloon. Simon’s balloon popped before the day was through, but Mim’s Elsa balloon is still hanging around the house, albeit a little deflated, and it’s been a few weeks.