The fog hath lifted!

For reasons unknown to me, for the past several years I've had trouble getting into the Christmas spirit. Well, it's not even that, it's more like, "I have no ambition to drag the Christmas boxes out of storage." No, I think it's even more than THAT! More like the, "I don't feel like cleaning only to mess it up again while decortating." kind of funk.

For many years, my personal tradition has been to have the tree up and decorated by Tyler's birthday (Dec. 3rd). There's a story behind this having to do with pregnancy and labor, but I'll save that for another post. Anyway, Angela's 1st Christmas she was 5 months old, and I was still walking around in the fog created by her various medical diagnoses that were being thrown at us every day. I did get the tree up, but not until about 2 weeks before Christmas. Late. I hate being late.

The next year Angela was crawling all over the place. Even though the boys begged every day, I just couldn't put the tree up. I knew the stress of keeping Angela away from it was more than I cared to deal with! LOL I finally put it up December 23rd, and, with many apologies to the boys, I took it down December 26th. Those 3 days were keeping Angela out of the tree were too much! Seriously.

The next year I was back on track though, and things were good! And they stayed good until about 4 years ago. I'm not really sure what happened. The tree got up, but usually late, and then it came down late too. (I'm pretty sure there is an unwritten rule that states the tree and all the other Christmas trimmings are to be back in storage by January 2nd!) One year the tree got put up, and the lights put on it, but the ornaments never made it onto the tree! How sad and pathetic is that? I didn't even have a good excuse as to why.

But this year...this year the funk is gone! Yep! Thanks to my neighbors, I've got the bug!

A couple weeks ago one neighbor got his outdoor lights up. Nothing out of the ordinary, it just looks pretty from up here on the hill. Angela noticed them right away. Then, last weekend, our other neighbor put his lights up as well.

That did it! I wanted COLOR outside! I ran to Walmart and got some icicle lights, only to get them home and discover you could only put 2 strands together. Half hour later I was back to Walmart returning them, and headed to Target instead. Good thing, as their lights were much less expensive for even more lights. I got them home, and before I even went into the house I started hanging them. Do you ever do stuff like that, and 1/2 way through the project realize you should have done it differently? Yeah, that's what I did. Oh well...I hung what I had, when Dean and I realized we needed 3 more strands to do what we *really* wanted to do. Again, nothing extravagant, just "better".

Later in the week I was at some store and found these solar light thingies that I thought would look great along the driveway. Cuz, you know, I like the runway effect. I brought them home, set them up, only to discover only four of the 12 I bought worked! Doggone it! This always happens to me. I decided to leave them where they were, find my receipt, and the next day I'd return them. Only I knew this would never happen because like always I kept forgetting to return them. Finally on Thursday I went to pull them up when I noticed a little red tag. Oh...look! I just needed to pull that little tag to activate them! DUH!

So yesterday Dean and I are at Home Depot. I have no clue what we went there for, but we ended up looking at Christmas stuff. They had this cute little potted tree thingy that I thought would look great on the front step. Only, it had 2 different prices on it. $63.00 and $32.00. That's a pretty big price difference. We looked down below at the boxes and couldn't find the right box to go with the description because it had yet another price on it. We called a clerk over and she said it was supposed to be $63, but because it was marked wrong we could have it for $32. COOL BEANS! Of course, it didn't occur to me until we got to the car that I really wanted TWO, so the front step could be balanced. LOL

Today Tyler and I were running errands (ok, we were out to pick up my latest craigslist find) and stopped at Home Depot because I wanted to see if they changed the price on that planter thingy from yesterday. No, I didn't get another, but I did get a really cute set of lights! Ok, really I got THREE sets to line the driveway. Yeah, the same place I put the solar thingies. They would have to come out. I came home and immediately started putting them up, and taking down the other things. I was 1/2 way through the job when I looked up and realized they'd look MUCH better in a different place, so I undid them, moved them, and reset everything.

Tonight I couldn't wait for it to get dark!

I still don't have the tree up, mostly because I'm afraid of the storage room, and what could happen to me in there while trying to get to the box with the tree. I'm trying to convince Dean we should just be a new, pre-lit artificial tree, but he said something to the effect of, "We can't just buy a new tree every year because the storage room is packed and you don't feel like going in there." Well, it sounds like a good reason to me, but whatever.....Thankfully TYLER has been here since Thursday, and he will do almost anything for me so tomorrow I'm going to beg HIM to dig the tree box out.

Oh Tyler.......