Hometown Christmas

Last night I joined my girlfriends at the Niceville Hometown Christmas festival. It was mostly a fun experience. I will rant for a moment here and tell you about our two rather unfavorable experiences.

It's cold outside and they were selling hot chocolate. We bought our hot chocolates and went inside the Community Center to warm up. As it sometimes happens - one of the kids spilled their hot chocolate and thankfully wasn't burned. The liquid, however, went all over a chair.

A lady - dressed as an ELF - came over and was quite rude to my friends - Christina - bless her heart - was trying to scrub out the chocolate from the blue chair - with a 20 lb baby strapped to her chest. This lady didn't once ask if the children were ok - or if she could help. She told Christina to get out of the way and MOVE! And at the same time she worried out loud about the carpet. I was standing there when she said - you aren't even supposed to have food or drinks in here!

My response to her - Well, it's cold outside, you are selling hot chocolate and there are no signs that say no food or drink in here.

Within 10 minutes, the grumpy elf returned with large yellow - handwritten signs scrawled with "NO FOOD OR DRINK" and plastered them on the doors.

My other complaint was that there were two beautiful trees inside the community center - and my daughter and her friend were admiring them and as curious toddlers often do - they gently touched the pretty ornaments. Some man - who I guess was responsible for the displays told them that the ornaments would bite them - which is a LIE and then complained to me that no one told him there would be kids allowed in the building and that it was all breakable and normally this building was reserved for adult functions.

Well - this is a family event and posting no kids allowed signs in the craft fair just isn't friendly. It was bad enough that we were treated badly because of a little spilled drink, but to then be complained to about kids being in the building put a rather sour taste in our mouths.


Fortunately there were plenty of other options there that were much more kid-friendly and we enjoyed ourselves eventually.

The kids loved the Reindeer Games and seeing some of the Disney princesses. I loved the hot, homemade soups for $2 a large cup!