Holiday lights and festive outings with kids around Seattle

Once Thanksgiving passes, Seattle gets dark early and wet often, which is exactly why the light shows become the best reason to take kids out in winter. All of these work for little ones: short walks, stroller paths, and a quick retreat to the car.

Snowflake Lane in Bellevue is a free show on the Bellevue Way sidewalk every night at 7: drummers, toy soldiers and fake snow, and twenty minutes is precisely a toddler's attention span. Garden d'Lights turns Bellevue Botanical Garden into a garden of half a million lights, a 40-minute loop that's free for kids under 10. For something bigger, WildLanterns at Woodland Park Zoo is a forest of life-size silk lanterns, and Zoolights at Tacoma's Point Defiance is Puget Sound's longest-running zoo light show. For train fans, the Santa Train at the Northwest Railway Museum in Snoqualmie is the event of the season.

• 5 places
• 1 free
• 5 stroller-friendly
• closest is 5 min away