Well, we are back home! It took most of the day to get here, but that was because we stopped off with the family to shop in a "day after Thanksgiving frenzy". After a couple of hours of fighting crowds we ate a quick lunch and hit the road for home. The driving part took us about seven and a half hours which is about average.
Anyway, we unloaded the car and everyone immediately went to their different corners of the house . . . kids playing video games, loving wife taking a bath, and me to my computer to write this.
For some reason I haven't been in the holiday spirit during this trip. I think it is because my parents live very far south and it never seems like winter down there even when it is cold. They say some people go through life thinking they were born in the wrong time. Well, I have always thought I was born in the wrong state. I mean, I love the South . . . it is so much more than the simplistic Hollywood stereotype that all those Blue staters seem to buy into. But I have always wanted to live up in Vermont or Wisconsin where they always get a real old fashioned snowy Christmas.
Anyway, I noticed that as we drove back north and it started to get dark and cold and the radio station started playing Christmas music, I suddenly started feeling very festive. And as we turned off the interstate onto the small country road that leads to our house and started seeing Christmas lights, we all really got in the holiday mood.
Christmas is my second favorite holiday, by the way . . . right after Halloween.
So tomorrow we will put up our outdoor Christmas decorations which consist of a large 42" wreath that hangs about 25 feet high on one part of our two story house and smaller wreaths that hang on the outside of each window. We also string greenery around the porch railing and over the large dining room window. Dark, almost plum-red colored ribbon decorates all the wreaths and the greenery, and we spotlight the whole thing. We also have large painted wooden cutouts of Santa and Mrs. Clause and three elves holding a "Happy Holidays" sign between them, which are also spotlighted. Our house, along with most of the houses in the neighborhood, sits back about 150 feet from the road so the decorations look pretty amazing if I say so myself. If I ever figure out how to post photos on this thing I will include one of the decorations.
Well, I need to do a few things so I am going to leave you with a couple of updates:
1) We decided to buy ANOTHER fake Christmas tree that we liked better than the first fake one we purchased. We had to strap it to the top of our van, but it seemed to make the trip with no damage. Now we have to take the first one back. The new one was more expensive, but already has lights on it, so that takes still another argument out of Christmas.
2) When we got back we noticed that one of our two garage doors was up. Evidently we forgot to lower it and it was up for the two days we were gone. Not that we were worried about anyone stealing anything in our rural Red state area, but we do live in the country and now loving wife is afraid some wild animal has moved in to hibernate.
