Lights

Starting my "catch-up" posts with our Christmas lights. I always like to turn our Christmas lights on the night after Thanksgiving. Partly because it's how they do it on Temple Square (my favorite lights anywhere) and partly because Christmas is my favorite time of the year, and I like to start it as soon as I can.

We usually put them up in advance, and then just turn them on that day, but this year I didn't get to it, (becoming a theme for me) so the whole family put them up that day. The kids were SO excited and eager to help. Despite my dream of having the entire house outlined in white lights (and nothing more), the people I live with love colorful one's, so we compromise with color on the fence. They were thrilled this year to add a snowman to our collection.

Jane "helped" by walking in the bare but dirty flower beds, and moving all the lights from where we'd carefully lined them up.
Jacob took his job as "extension cord holder" very seriously.

Right after this Jacob suggested that Rick stand outside holding the next one, while he went inside to plug it in - maybe in a few years buddy!
We sent our fearless Rebekah up the ladder to do the high one's in the tree. I had to show this awsone "butt shot" of her at work. This is also higher than it looks. She got most of them that way, but I still ended climbing the tree to get the highest one's. It's kind of a tradition, but while up there I was wondering about the weight I've gained and just exactly how much stress those little branches could take .... It's also the first year we've ever had all those leaves still on when we put up lights.

Emy helped with the one's on the fence.
Jane assigned herself the job of popping the bubble wrap the snowman came in.
Jacob thought the hat was the greatest.

The end result.