Halton Hills - Standing at the end of the driveway of her Glen Williams home, Sara surveys her front yard.
“We definitely didn’t think this was going to be our lawn,” she says.
It started with three – two Santas and a snowman. And then it grew. And grew. And grew.
Today, the lawn is a sea of inflatables, everything from a foot-tall wiener dog to a 20-foot Santa, from Frozen characters to Star Wars.
Foster, the seven-year-old responsible for the collection, walks past Santa in a plane, complete with a spinning propeller. Past the Grinch, Christmas tree slung over his shoulder, with his dog Max. Past a Minion. Past Mrs. Claus and a trio of elves. Past Tigger popping out of a snow-covered tree until he arrives at a trembling snowman.
It's his favourite of the 114 inflatables on the lawn. “I like that it shivers,” the Grade 2 student says.
The shivering snowman was a birthday gift. One thing about Foster’s infatuation with inflatables is that it makes it easy to shop for presents.
“He’s obsessed with them,” Sara says. “We go to the States every year for his birthday. They have all the Colossals, the big 20-foot ones.”
Fortunately, his birthday is in November, so he doesn’t have to wait long to see them in action.
Foster got hooked on inflatables when he was three. There was a snowman in the Real Canadian Superstore and he’d make his mom take him to look at it every time they were in the store.
Eventually, his parents bought him one of his own. In 2021, they put up three inflatables on the front lawn. With birthday and Christmas presents, the display grew to 17 the following year.
And then the family posted a video of Foster saying he’d rather go to Canadian Tire than Disneyland. It went viral and the local Canadian Tire owners saw it and gave him some gift cards, which of course he used to buy more inflatables.
By 2023, there were 55. And then people started giving Foster inflatables that they weren’t using anymore, which is how the display more than doubled in size this year.
“It kind of snowballed,” Sara said. (And yes, they do have a snowball, with reindeer legs sticking out of it.)
The display’s biggest enemy is the wind. The family closely monitors weather forecasts and if the wind picks up, the whole display can be deflated in about five minutes.
The display, which stays up for about six weeks, started attracting visitors to Glen Crescent and has grown to the point that it now has its own Foster’s Inflatables website. Because the display is so dependent on weather, the family updates it each day to let people know if the display is up.
There are inflatables for other occasions as well -- Easter, Halloween, Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, and Canada Day -- but nothing to rival the Christmas collection.
Sara said it took her and her husband Matt about 50 hours to set up the display. Each inflatable has its own fan and they can be inflated anywhere from two to 10 minutes depending on the size. Surprisingly, Sara said it's not nearly as hard on the hydro bill as a light display would be.
Asked what his favourite time is, Christmas morning or the day the inflatable display goes up, Foster pauses for longer than most kids would given the choice between Christmas and almost anything else. Finally, he chooses Christmas morning. And then changes his mind 15 seconds later.
So while she didn’t envision her lawn being commandeered by inflatables, Sara says there’s a simple reason for continuing to put them up every year.
“It brings joy to him and it brings joy to others,” she said.
