One thing I LOVE about Christmastime is the lights!! Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved to see all the holiday lights while driving around town. It was a big deal… I don’t think we had lights on OUR house til I moved away to college. Dang!!
Since having kids, and from the time my boys were little, we always had one evening during the holidays that we’d bundle up the jammied kids into the car, let the dog hop in, and we’d drive around to see all the “good” displays of the season.
We’d oooh and ahhh, and drive all around (probably until the kids were yawning and we were guaranteed an easy bedtime).
We would always be amazed by the homes that were just completely covered and lit up with the holiday spirit!
It was an annual tradition!
OK, fast-forward those 4 boys a few years, and you can just IMAGINE the excitement. Teenagers are kind of hard to bundle up in cute footie-jammies and pile into the car. But we’d try! Oh yeah, maybe with a few grumbles and groans, but we knew they really loved it but could not admit it. The dog was ALWAYS happy to venture out, though! When we first moved to Tucson, our oldest was in his first year of high school… so that is when the groaning probably began. That’s when we had to step it up a notch. As in BRIBERY. In most parts of the country, that might be the promise of hot cocoa and marshmallows or something to warm ya up at the end of a long night in the car. But in Tucson, it meant ICE CREAM. That worked for a few years.
This year, we haven’t had time to fit it in yet. There’s still this week, though! Heck, we have all of next week too!! I mean, no one is on the ball enough to take their lights down at least until New Years.
And, just in case… we do our own light display. 
The boys and I are convinced that their dad is trying to channel Clark Griswold, of Christmas Vacation fame, as he hangs the lights. His goal is to be first and BEST on the block. (He was first, all right. I hadn’t even begun to think about Thanksgiving when the ol’ tubs of lights and extension cords were hauled out onto the driveway. See, here is where teenage boys and lights DO mix…. bribery too, for that matter. He had the 16 year old up on the tall, tall ladder doing all the vertical work. But it was only early November. We wouldn’t let him flip the switch til at LEAST Thanksgiving week!
And I must admit, it is nice to be welcomed home by festive lights after a long day of errands and Christmas shopping! Just too bad there are no little ones to bundle up these days…
Hey! Maybe if we go in search of THESE kind of Christmas lights, I can talk those big ol’ boys of mine into driving ME around this year…
Sooooo…. time for the nightly drawing!!
LIGHTS camera action, drumroll, and a big “come on down” to YOU….JOYFUL QUILTER!!! (Pam….we know that’s you!!) Congrats.
Keep the comments coming (and we are LOVING all the comments by the way)… we still have this whole pile of presents to divvy up and we need 12 lucky quilters and blog-readers to send ‘em to! So tell us…. lights on your house, or not?!!
My son tells me that the glow from our house is like a homing beacon when you are coming thru town!! LOL I tried some of the white LED lights this year though, and HATE them - too “cold” looking for me…So next year it’s back to the regular ol’ icicle lights from the roof - I like them MUCH better 