It's hard to miss the house lit up for Christmas in Grand Rapids, on Ball Avenue NE and Knapp Street NE. This year, it's a special celebration. It's the first one that 16-year-old Joshua Farmer is spending with his adopted family.
There's 50,000 lights and dozens of inflatables at the home, which Farmer helped set up with his half-brother and father who adopted him earlier this year. He's now a junior at Northpointe Christian High School.
"My grandmother passed away from COVID, and my grandpa wasn't handling it very well, and then I reached out to my brother and that's how it all happened," he says.
"I asked Josh, I said 'What do you want more than anything else?'" his adopted father Stephen Nortier says. "He said 'I want my grandfather to get better and care for me, and I want somebody to care for me.'"
13 ON YOUR SIDE met Nortier about two years ago when he had just taken in Farmer's half-brother Robert Ander, who was also going through a rough patch.
"At that point, he was almost homeless. He wanted to start afresh, a new life," Nortier said back in 2019.
And after meeting Farmer earlier this year, Nortier knew he had to adopt him.
"May 17th of 2021 at 9:38 AM, that little man walks into the backseat of my car we were sitting in, and he looks at me and goes 'Hi dad,'" Nortier says. "And I just about lost it."
Fast forward to now, he gets to share this annual tradition of holiday decorations with his son.
"When people come and see it and you see their faces, it's so worth it," he says.
Farmer hopes that the display can bring some joy to the neighborhood and any donations made will go towards his school for a new band room.
"Around this time, it's about the time of giving, setting up these lights and doing the fundraiser is a way of me giving back to people, to the school for what they've done for me," he says.
There were plenty of family and neighbors visiting the light display Friday night, which took the brothers about three weeks to get set up.
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