Christmas Lights!

I think Josh is the only person who knows just how important Christmas lights on the outside of the house are to me. It all started when I was a little girl. We lived in an apartment on 1st East... a few days before Thanksgiving my dad would put a string of lights... it was my job to "color coordinate". That was my favorite thing! Green, red, white, blue and yellow. We could turn them on the Friday after Thanksgiving. Also on that day Logan City would turn on the Christmas lights down Main Street. Red and Green tinsel like decorations with lights that were strung across the street every so often... (It seemed like there were 100's of them...probably more like one every block). I loved when we could "drag Main" and see them if it was snowing... the effect was that much sweeter!

Forward to our house in Lamplighter. Because our house was dark wood... and we had a Cathedral ceiling in the front... when Christmas lights were turned on, it looked just like a Gingerbread House. The colors of the lights were more pastel... it was sooo pretty. They had 2 deer made (you know the ones)... They always were chained to the ground under the tree in the front yard. Our house looked awesome!

When I married Randy... we never had lights outside at all... It was dark and I hated it! So for Josh and I's first Christmas on our own I actually hung a strand of lights on the front of our apartment... it wasn't much... but it was back to tradition again! We lived there for a few more years and my dad did the work of hanging the lights... he even put lights on the small tree by our carport. Back to tradition...yea!

When Josh and I moved into the condo... wow.. .now it was time to really decorate. Josh was older so my dad taught him how to hang the lights on the house... set up the "loop da loops" (they are iron posts with a hook on the end), put the wreaths on both sides of the garage and set up the "courtyard" with loop da loops and our very own set of deer... my dad even created trees... he strung green lights on very large wire tomato covers. We had the biggest driveway of them all... completely lit with loop da loops... Our house rocked! Shoveling snow over the loop-da-loops was not an easy task!

When Val and I got married our first Christmas the boys put lights up all around the house... all 4 sides... we didn't use the little "twinkle lights"... we used the large white lights! My dad would tease that the planes flying into the Logan Airport would get confused and think that our house was the runway! When Josh left on his mission... holidays were super hard for me! So many of the holidays we had traditions and without him they just weren't the same. Lights on the house being one of them. I would start bugging Val about lights... (not his thing) and Ben would end up putting the lights on the house at the last minute.... Thanks Ben... that really meant a lot! This year I been so busy with work... I really didn't care if the lights got put up or not... Josh knew better. He kept bugging Val (until he didn't have a choice) Josh was going up on the roof... with or without his help! I came home after a very long day at work... to be surprised with beautiful multi-colored lights to greet me! Thanks Josh for knowing how much lights at Christmas mean to me. I hope when you get married... you will keep the Christmas lighting tradition going!