Thursday, December 24, 2009

Christmas Festivities

Well, we went a little crazy with the Christmas lights this year. Jared even took some time to program the lights to music that people could tune in and listen on their car radios. I think it turned out pretty good.
All right, just kidding. That was a house a few blocks away. This is what our house looks like.Yeah, it's a little sad in comparison, but I'm just happy that any lights got up at all. I don't know if you can tell from this picture, but the lights don't quite make it to the end of the house. We had another 13 foot strand and just bunched them closer together in years past, but this year Jared thought he'd solve this annoying problem once and for all. He cut the remaining strand to the right length, spliced the wires back together and ta da, a five foot strand of lights just perfect for our house. And they worked too, for a minute... until they all blew up. Lesson learned: V=I*R is still true. I keep thinking we should hang the bum lights up so people can at least assume that small portion is burned out instead of thinking we miscalculated or were too lazy to complete it. It's certainly made me think about designing our future house specifically to fit the standard length of lights, that's for sure.

I saw an amazing display of Christmas trees and decorations on a friend's blog and thought I would show you our feeble attempt. First, our tree is rotting and way past dead. I don't know if we bought it too early or if it's just the fact that things rot when it's 80 degrees, but nonetheless I haven't enjoyed it all that much this year. This may partly have to do with a certain 18 month old who has undecorated the tree over and over again and broken anything breakable within her reach. She loves throwing the balls on the floor and then is bewildered when they shatter instead of bounce or roll. I wonder why I even have those things anyway. I'm not sure what it is with her, but we have had trees in the past and toddlers her age and we've never had this problem (serves me right for posting about what a great baby she is, I mean was). I guess it doesn't help that Erin also plays Easter with the ornaments. Here's the sad half decorated sight.
This is the extent of my Christmas decorations.This is Erin's contribution. She made this lovely wreath at school, came home, got a chair and some tape, went outside and put it up. I love it.Our display of Christmas cards. I like this tree better than the real one.One of my favorite family traditions (fifth year running) is getting a cute family ornament. The envelope is this year and the car was two years ago. These are also breakable so you never know how long they'll be around, but so far so good.
Our other tradition is driving around to see Christmas lights. Nope, it's not Temple Square, it's just a crazy family who loves Christmas... a lot. This was before they opened the gates. The kids were amazed!
Erin also had a "Holiday" program at school where she and the five other classes of kindergarteners sang Rudolf, Dreidel songs, Feliz Navidad, etc. It was fantastic. I can't believe they taught them all those songs. I also can't believe that half of the kindergarteners are over 5 feet tall (slight exaggeration). Erin was on the short row. The other thing that made me laugh was that during the program Erin kept shewing the kid next to her away. I asked her about it later and she said it was because he smelled bad. Poor kid, both of them. Erin has a very sensitive nose.I'll post another about Christmas day. Right now I'm just counting down the hours till we can get the stinky tree out of the house!

3 comments:

Lisa said...

I love your decorations. Your tree looks much better than ours, believe me.

We loved your card too!! Congrats!

Mary Evans said...

Erin looks like an angel and so happy in her program. She sure has grown a lot since those days when she was too shy to participate. See you soon. Love, Mom

Alan Daniels Family said...

First, it doesn't look like our card made the card tree....hopefully it made a more important place, like the bathroom mirror so you can see our lovely faces every morning! Second, you almost caused the Christmas Light Battle of 2010. I almost wish the first picture had been your house, then I could justify to Alan why we need more lights next year!