Sorry for the lack of activity on my blog lately. I've been spending every spare moment working on photo books of the year for my kids for Christmas and pretty much everything else in my life has been neglected. I completed and purchased the books today and now I'm trying to get back into the swing of things.
I plan to update the Weekend Events page sometime tomorrow (Thursday). In the meantime, I'm reposting what I wrote about the Honolulu City Lights electric parade last year. It's a fun parade with lots of bands, floats, and city vehicles covered in lights. For my family it's a "not to be missed" holiday event and the 2011 version of the parade is happening this Saturday night.
Reposted from December 2010
The Honolulu City Lights electric light parade has become an annual tradition for our family and we enjoyed it again this year. It's always on a Saturday night, probably the first one in December but I'd have to check my calendars from previous years to be sure. Lots of people go early and enjoy the rides and activities around Honolulu Hale but we prefer to watch the parade as it comes through
Chinatown. It's less crowded there and getting in and out and finding parking is pretty easy.
Our kids enjoyed dancing along to the Christmas music as various bands marched by and they loved getting candy that was passed out by parade participants. Our son remembered this from last year and asked that we take a bag to put his stash in. During the parade he decided the candy bag should sit back next to me rather than by him, so the people passing out the candy would think he didn't have any and would be sure to give him some. As soon as he'd get a piece of candy he'd turn around and toss it to me for safe-keeping in his bag. Our daughter's technique was to eat as much candy during the parade as she could and she may or may not have eaten candy stolen from the big kids she was sitting with in addition to her own.
There were some nice floats in the parade but my favorites were the utility vehicles bedecked in lights. Have you ever seen such a nice looking dump truck?
And look at this fancy sewer pumping truck.
I didn't get a picture of the Handi-Van that was tripped out to look like a low-rider, complete with a spoiler on the back, but it was one of my other favorites.
This parade is happening this Saturday, December 3, 2011 starting at 6pm in downtown Honolulu. More details to come on the Weekend Events page.
The tree "snows" bubbles, but not just regular spherical bubbles. These are clumps of little bubbles or something and when they float through the air they really look like snowflakes. When they land they look more like bubbles, but in the air they look cool and the kids enjoy running around in them, trying to catch them, etc. The tree "snows" for 15 minutes at a time but after about 10 minutes our hungry kids were ready to get some food. They enjoyed the tree though and I'm glad we took them again this year. 
We went to Windward Mall last week to hear a musical performance and see the snowing Christmas tree. 
We have been busy this month with one Christmas activity after another! Our most recent Christmas adventure was a trolley ride to see the city lights. This year we went on a trolley chartered by Hawaii International Child. Our ride began and ended at their office where we had hot chocolate and cookies and got to take pictures by the Christmas tree.
Last weekend we went to Zoolights, the zoo's Christmas event for those with zoo memberships. (I'm a little behind with this post. If chronology is important to you, we actually did this the day after the light parade, but I was so excited about the big waves I had to share them right away.)
Last night we went and watched the Electric Light Parade downtown. A group of us met up in Chinatown and watched the parade there. This was our girl's first parade and she was very wide-eyed, especially at the beginning. She noticed that in addition to waving , lots of people were flashing the shaka and it was cute to watch her try to figure out how to do that herself. She loved eating the candy they passed out and by the end her white shirt was dotted with sticky sugary sweets in multiple colors. 
No Christmas parade would be complete without jolly old St. Nick and he and Mrs. Clause were on the last float, wishing everyone a Mele Kalikimaka.
Seemed like the parade stopped a lot more this year than it did last year, and there weren't that many actual floats, mostly just decorated vehicles, but we still had a great time and it got us in the Christmas spirit!
But the evening's festivities were not over. After the tree was lit, Santa and Mrs. Clause arrived by horse drawn carriage and then the Honolulu Boys Choir performed. We got to hear them a couple times last Christmas season, but I have to admit I spent more time chatting with friends than listening to them this year. Their music is excellent though and I enjoyed what I did hear.
We skipped pictures with Mr. and Mrs. Clause because the line was really long (and skipped the free trolley rides for the same reason), but got pictures with the lesser known Christmas character Nana Bear instead. What, you've never heard of Nana Bear? Yeah, me neither (maybe it's a Castle mascot or something) but we got cute pictures. Our girl was very intrigued with the bear and wanted to look at it but not get too close. On the way home our boy figured out there must have been a person inside the bear and so we told him who was inside since it happened to be a good family friend. We know quite a few people who work at Castle and I don't know if it's because of that or because of the way the program is designed, but the Castle tree lighting just feels like a big block party celebration to me.
Then it was off to the pumpkin patch in search of the perfect pumpkins. We decided we'd get a small one for each child and a big one to carve.
Our girl had fun walking through the field and got herself quite dirty in no time. She liked the big pumpkins best and thought they made great drums. Our boy enjoyed the pumpkin selecting process. Our criteria was that he had to be able to carry whatever pumpkin he picked. He quickly found his own pumpkin, picked one out for his sister and offered lots of advice on which big pumpkin we should get.
As we wrapped up the pumpkin picking my husband and I realized we had very little cash between the two of us ($2 and some loose change in the car). We asked and found out the pumpkin patch only took cash and the nearest ATM was, well, not near. So we ditched the big pumpkin, paid for the kids' little pumpkins and then stopped at the pumpkin pile for one last photo op, where the kids were much more interested in playing with the pumpkins than posing for a photo.
We made it back to the car with no tantrums, tears or whining even though we'd said 'no' to the bouncy house and had only purchased two pumpkins. Hooray for happy kids and happy parents! I think that getting there after the heat of the day definitely worked in our favor.
