Jubilee of Trees

The Jubilee of Trees is a yearly charity fundraiser for Dixie Regional Medical Center (in St. George Utah). People donate super fancy trees, wreaths, gingerbread houses and baked goods to be sold or auctioned to benefit the hospital. I remember going to it as a kid. My mom is on the entertainment committee, and she was performing, so we hauled the family down there yesterday to see her. I had already gone down on Friday with Luke, but I knew that Madelyn would love it, so we went back.

There's my mom! She played Christmas songs and hymns on her guitar.

 

Loved this tree--it was Christmas at Tiffany's. All my pictures only turned out so-so. And guess why! I just barely took a look at the lens on my camera, and it was covered in little boy finger smears.

LUKE!!!

  

 

 Most of the trees had themes--this one was Midnight in Paris or something.

Charles Dickens theme

The Hunger Games theme. (Seriously!)

Chinese fans and fortune cookies

I have never seen such amazing gingerbread houses. My skills in that area are severely lacking. The one on the right was made by Virginia Woodward. She donated four houses, which took her four months to construct and decorate.

She even decorates the inside!!!! I think this house was being sold for $425.00.

And speaking of little houses, this tree was my favorite.

The whole thing was full of these mini replicas of famous old buildings around the St. George area. I was in awe.

There's Brigham Young's winter home (which is in downtown St. George)

The Dixie bluff and the little old Hurricane Library

St. George Tabernacle

St. George Temple

 

And my favorite, the 100 year old original Dixie Academy...aka where I danced ballet for about 15 years. I started to choke up when I saw it, I kid you not. I've spent so much of my life in that building.

Anyway, the main reason we came was because of this girl. She'd had the most awful week--first with the vomiting/diarrhea/hives all night Sunday, having to come home from school early a couple of days with a tummyache, throwing up at school, falling and bruising her tailbone at the skate park on Saturday, and we just confirmed that she also has a UTI and has started antibiotics yesterday. She needed some serious cheering up. So she got some cotton candy and popcorn, candy and a sparkly pencil...

We went to the Kid's Village, which was themed like The Wizard of Oz.

 She got a snowflake necklace and face paint

"Dear Santa, From Madelyn. For Christmas I want a puppet monster and a snowboard." We didn't pay to get her picture with Santa, but he saw her from across the way and waved to her, which she was tickled pink about.

Luke was having so much fun that we had to drag him away, kicking and screaming. That was lovely.

The LEGO tree was cool

 

So was The Lorax tree!

 

Luke's favorite was the Madagascar 3 tree, complete with stuffed animals of all the characters. We rented that movie from Redbox last week and the kids watched it three times in a row. It has some really funny parts.

Now that I've done a little update, I've got to get back to painting! We're having family over on Thanksgiving day, so that is my motivation to get this dang project finished. Wish me luck. I've only got like, 15 doors and 18 miles of wood trim to paint, so it should be a piece of CAKE. I think I'll just go ahead and start of with a Dr. Pepper and a brownie. Happy Monday.