Tis The Season

Deck the Halls/Walls and Roofs!
Here it is, the week before Thanksgiving, when all through the house....Barb is pulling out Christmas decorations. It's times like this when you realize how much you under-appreciated your oldest son's enthusiastic outdoor decor.  "Bear" if you read this...Mommy loves you and misses you.

Seriously, Terry had said this year he WAS NOT going to put up lights.  If I wanted them up I had to get Jared to help...and if Jared couldn't help I was on my own. (It helped that Terry was working on the neighbors back door).

Rising to the Challenge
This past Saturday I bravely went where no mom has gone before...to the shed to get out the 8 foot ladder.
I then got up into the rafters of the garage looking for the boxes of Christmas lights.  I had decided I wanted the icicle lights on the front of the house...that's all no more...no less.

I did break down and asked Jared via text...how many strings does the front of the house take...and it's four. Very diligently I tested and fixed four strings of lights and then got the ladder around the front of the house and started work.  It went pretty smoothly until I reached the awning that hangs over the front bay window.  As I was repositioning the ladder, Terry showed up to make sure "I didn't fall off the @#$ ladder".  All in all it was pretty smooth sailing.

Our new neighbor had promised her son she would put up lights this year, so when she got back from the store, she borrowed the ladder and we got her lights up too!  Girls Rock!

So I figured, why not put up the 8 foot Santa, and the 8 foot Reindeer....and the net lights for the bushes and more icicles on the lilac bush.  So by this time...Terry figured I needed help (since the big guys have to be staked and tethered to the ground).  Once we were done, it did look good!  I left them on until just before dinner and then turned them off.

Terry came up from downstairs and said "Why'd you turn the lights off? Don't we need to make sure they look good in the dark"? And flipped the switch on.

Everything blew.  Apparently adding the extra four strings to the lilac bush was too much and you are not allowed to connect more than six strings of lights together of one power source.


I think that's some kind of "man rule" that only guys know about.

Needless to say...Menards loves us.