Outside Holiday Decorations

I am weird, I have always had this burning desire to be like the Griswold's and go hog wild on the outside of my house with Christmas lights and decorations. I have NEVER been able to convince my husband to go along with my grand idea until today! Shh, don't tell him but we are easing into it. It started out with this little guy. Isn't he adorable? On the way home from church N kept asking us to turn up the music. We were listening to a Mannheim Steamroller CD gone techno. It put Aaron a bit over the edge. So I said we could go to Target and buy a new Christmas CD if he'd like...We went to Target (or the $100 store as we like to call it, still my favorite store but...) for a lint brush roller and maybe a CD let me repeat a LINT BRUSH ROLLER, and we came out with a bill of $234.13 YIKES. Dave Ramsey hates me right now, and truth be told I kind of hate myself..but anyway, we went to the Christmas decorations to find a stocking for H and a blow up snowman for N (for the front yard). He chose the little guy instead.

When we got home it was so beautiful out we decided to work outside for the day. I was hard at work raking 5 more bags of leaves to add to the 13 from last weekend! Aaron got stuck hanging Christmas lights (and that's not what we bought for $234.13, I have TOTES of lights I have been buying since who knows when) So Aaron got one string of icicle lights hung across the garage and came and said to me all nice and sincere...here I'll do that, I know you have always wanted the lights on the house so you can go do it...let me remind you this was as I was on the fifth and FINAL bag of leaves. Thank you honey!

Well since he worked so hard getting one strand up I decided to leave it up. So we have icicle lights over the one stall garage attached to the house and the front door

and then I finished the rest of the house and the ground with the big colored lights

Aaron conveniently went inside to put H down for her nap and "accidentally" fell asleep.

N was such a little trooper. He went and found his tool box and got out his little hammer and helped me pound all of the steaks in for the lights on the ground. He even "held" the ladder for me as I worked on the roof. As you can see our tree still needs a few more lights. We are hoping for one more nice day so we can get it accomplished.

Next year I am hoping for a snowman family and lights around each of the windows.

As I was decorating this thought popped into my head. When we were kids we would complain about doing the dishes on a nightly basis. We BEGGED for a dishwasher. I'm sure it probably even made our Christmas list a time or two. My mom's response always was, "what in the world do I need a dishwasher for when I have three perfectly good ones?" I think my blood pressure would boil. But I was laughing to myself today thinking I should have had a few more kids so that someday I could have professional rake-rs and light hanger uppers.

Mom when my kids are 12 and 14 don't even think about telling them I was plotting this since they were 2 and 4!