Portland Christmas Tree Lighting

Yesterday evening, we surprised my mom and took her to see the lighting of the tree at Pioneer Square in Portland. We were about 40 minutes early for the festivities to begin so we decided to grab a bite at Pita Pit. Little did we know just how many people were going to be there!

#1 - It wasn't raining and it was pretty mild out.

#2 - I personally think more people need cheering up this Christmas and this is typically a cheerful event.

So, what that means is...a lot of people showed up! 25,000 from what I heard!

We got a great parking spot in a nearby garage, so that was nice. We started walking toward Pioneer Square and the amount of people grew and grew. There was no way we were going to get into the lower part of the square itself, but that was OK. This was a BIG tree, so you could see it from a distance quite nicely. So, we decided to just start walking around the square until we saw an opening to stand and wait. Well, there were no openings, so we did as everyone else did. We started mooching our way up to as close as we could get ourselves....which ended up being on the outer edge of the square just below Starbucks, so, not very close. If it wasn't for the columns that are everywhere in that corner, we would have had a clear shot. But, that's OK too. As we were packed in like sardines listening to the Christmas music and watching people trying to do the same thing, we just waited until it was time.
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1....tada! Merry Christmas!

The tree was beautiful. The crowds were friendly and my mom loved the adventure.

I couldn't get a good shot because there was no way that we could get the tripod set up anywhere, so these pictures are blurry. But, I'll share them anyways. Oh, and by the way, these shots were taken way after the crowds were already starting to go home, so the picture of my mom standing there...10 minutes earlier, we could hardly move, let alone turn around and take a picture. The bottom picture was taken on our way back to the parking garage. I just thought it was a neat shot of the city with the tree in the background. There weren't very many people around at that point because we had to make a potty stop at Macy's. That took another 1/2 hour because of the lines in there...ladies restroom, of course! :-)

'Tis the season...I hope we don't get too caught up in all that goes on to remember the true meaning of Christmas.