Lighten up...

I gave in and agreed to setting up outside lights this weekend. We haven't done outside xmas lights since we got here 3 years ago. Now I remember why. Finding them in the attic was one thing, finding the bad bulbs, bad strings, bad polarized plugs that don't play nice with the other strings, all those wonderful things I experienced again, boy did I miss them.

I also brought down Buck and Jane Doe, our 10 year old animatronic lighted dear deer. That is, if you consider a 10 inch movement of the head up and down or side to side to have any similarity to the It's a Small World ride. Problem is that these originally came with eight pieces of metal that allowed you to spike them to the ground. Nooo, they are long gone to that great lost area where the other sock and TV remotes go. So we're left with balancing wire deer on thin legs in 30 mile per hour winds. The other problem was that Buck's front two legs do not light, leading my oldest Aly to comment that he now looks like a kangaroo. Of course that gets my mind racing on how I could write the next Rudolf the Red Nose reindeer song for a Kangaroo (Ken the Kristmas Kangaroo was my fist choice). But alas, those ever-industrious Aussies already appear to have one. I am a sucker for real bad Christmas songs:

Six White Boomers

So six light sets later, with the reds out on one of the chaser sets, half the lights out on two of our 'net' light sets, we're done. 1/2 hour later, we look out to find Jane laying on the ground with her head off her body and the neck still slowly writhing to the animatronic beat. We get fixed and bring Gracie out, the REAL reason we set all this up. She is fascinated with the lights on the house next door and we wanted her to have something to ooo and aahhh over at our house. She ran from house to house babbling with delight, but the chasers sans the red were her favorite. Twinkle Lights, Twinkle Lights! We are finally officially in the Christmas spirit!