{"id":35625,"date":"2024-12-26T15:03:44","date_gmt":"2024-12-26T20:03:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=35625"},"modified":"2025-01-09T17:57:52","modified_gmt":"2025-01-09T22:57:52","slug":"family-first-night-celebrates-dawn-of-2025-year-of-the-snake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/family-first-night-celebrates-dawn-of-2025-year-of-the-snake\/","title":{"rendered":"Family First Night celebrates dawn of 2025, Year of the Snake"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Aurora residents can ring in the New Year at the Aurora Family Leisure Complex this Tuesday as the Town hosts its annual Family First Night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the community looks forward to 2025, Family First Night is an opportunity to gather for an evening of fun with free swimming, skating, activities \u2013 and the chance to slither over to a few creatively crafty stations to celebrate the incoming Year of the Snake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beginning at 6 p.m., and running through 9 p.m., the Town\u2019s Special Events team have planned a full evening of bubble, reptile, science and magic shows, leisure swims, holiday skates, crafts, balloon twisting, and face painting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is a classic event in that we have ZooTek returning with three reptile shows; we have Smile Canada returning with three bubble shows; Mad Science will be doing a dry ice experiment, which will provide kids with a hands-on learning activity, and we also have the Pickpocket Magician who will be doing two shows while public skating and swimming is all happening \u2013 and it\u2019s all free,\u201d says Shelley Ware, Special Events Coordinator for the Town of Aurora. \u201cThere will also be face painting, balloon twisting, inflatables, and indoor games in the gymnasium. I\u2019m very reflective on how we incorporate the Chinese New Year because I learn each year. With 2025 being the Year of the Snake \u2013 and I\u2019m deathly afraid of snakes! \u2013 it\u2019s been a reflective time as I learn about the traits of the snake, how it fits in with the Chinese New Year and this year we\u2019re celebrating the onset of the coming Year of the Snake with an interesting twist!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe really do try to pack as much as many family-oriented opportunities as we can. From 6 \u2013 9 p.m., it\u2019s a way to celebrate earlier in the evening and it enables families who do leave with any excess energy left over to be able to have other plans that evening.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more information on Family First Night, including a full-schedule of activities, visit aurora.ca\/familyfirstnight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Family First Night is the last special event in what has turned out to be a very busy year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Asked whether this is considered a grand finale of the year, however, Ware replied with a laugh that it\u2019s hard to feel that way as they\u2019re already in the middle of planning for Canada Day 2025!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking back over 2024, one of the key highlights for Ware was the opening of Aurora Town Square in September.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEvery single event has its own personality and there is always, always that ah-ha moment,\u201d says Ware of what makes each event special. \u201cBut, since you asked for [a single highlight] I don\u2019t think anything can touch the official grand opening of Town Square when the Town Crier led the St. Andrew\u2019s Pipe Band into the Square for the first time for the official ribbon cutting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBetween when the tender was issued and the opening on September 21, a lot went on, which I call the \u2018dash\u2019 between August 2020-September 21, 2024. So much hard work, passion, fun, innovation, problem-solving \u2013 every skillset was empowered to push to the end amongst all staff. In that moment, we were there and it was officially opened. Even now, just talking about it, is emotional, but that moment would be my highlight for 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor our events, I truly feel we have the best audiences, we have the best spectators, and we have the best participants. Also, with the small-town charm we house, we\u2019re able to attract a really great calibre of talent \u2013 but not only just talented artists, but really good people who put their all into what they deliver in services in Aurora \u2013 and I think this year we really need to pay tribute to Mother Nature because, from a weather perspective, she was our cheerleader this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd Family First Night isn\u2019t weather-dependent, so pack up and come on over!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aurora residents can ring in the New Year at the Aurora Family Leisure Complex this Tuesday as the Town hosts its annual Family First Night. As the community looks forward to 2025, Family First Night is an opportunity to gather for an evening of fun with free swimming, skating, activities \u2013 and the chance to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-9gB","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-15 08:47:38","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35625"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35626,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35625\/revisions\/35626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}