Christmas at our house- Part I : A Husband has no fear

Editor's Note: No husbands were hurt in the making of these pictures.

As a child, I always loved this time of the year. Up here where the snow flies often, we try to begin to decorate before that. Some years that means August. Well, we had an unusually warm November this year, so after Thanksgiving I decided that this was going to be the year, the year that I get the house decorated like in my childhood dreams.

I began by scouring the local home stores for appropriate lighting. Whoa - anyone checkout the prices on those stinking LED lights? I thought about digging out my ol' electronics set and making my own lights, afterall, I do have those handy dandy degrees in electrical engineering, right? Lets not forget that there is a big difference between and electrician and an electrical engineer, and furthermore, a young Chinese line worker who actually assembles those lights in a dimly lit factory somewhere in Zhong Shan.

WalMart came to my rescue and in combination with some fancy schmancy lights I picked up at Lowe's, I was off. When Steve heard about my plans to climb up on the roof and get those bad boys strung, he promptly intervened. I said "yes" he said "no" back and forth a few times. In the end, I said I would call someone to install, and Steve promptly pulled the ol' ladder out of storage and hopped onto one roof, onto another roof, and finally settled onto the final roof where he managed to get them hung, although not completely to my satisfaction since I had bought these special clips so the lights would all line up the same way, and he quickly told me to pound salt. Now, Steve's version of the story may vary, his going along the lines of I was going to go up there, and he trumped me with a larger life insurance policy, and off he went. Either way, after risking dear Steve's life to make my wishes come true, I am quite sure we managed to confirm our neighbors feelings that we are indeed mentally unstable.

A neighbor stopped by to drop off a poinsettia plant (that is quite beautiful I must say and whose sales proceeds go to the Syracuse Children's Chorus - ha ha Missy!) and asked how we managed to get the lights up since apparently, our rumors of our insanity have not made their way through the neighborhood. When we told him, this very bright doctor remarked with a "Wow". This "wow" had a tone of "are you nuts" to it. He also sounded a tad jealous - come to find out, this gentleman's daughters loved our lights and asked him to do something similar to their house. Ha ha - I don't know about Steve, but I now felt redemption in our attempts to create a visage of light around our house. Children were talking about our lights! No greater compliment than that.

The husband hasn't asked for a divorce yet, so I suppose I am still within the limits of life risking adventures that I ask of him. He can be such a good guy I tell you!