My Very Own Clark W. Griswold

I was so excited to be able to put lights up on our house for the very first time! In the four years we lived in our town home, we never put up lights on the outside of the house. This year in our new house would be different! Our neighborhood goes all out with Christmas decorations. Not only does almost every single house put up some kind of lights on their home, most everyone puts a five foot tree (adorned in colored lights) in their front yard. It is so cool to be able to drive down street after street and look down and see a row of colored trees!

Being as it was our first year with exterior illumination, we decided to go with colored lights. When I was a little girl- we always had colored lights. It seems like a little more fun, especially when you have small kids to enjoy them! Damien- with the help of his little elf Claire, strung the lights on the entire perimeter of the house. They looked great! And the obsessive compulsive side of me loved that Damien hung them so straight! Watching Claire out there helping Damien reminded me of when I was younger. Somehow- I always got the job of helping my Dad hang the Christmas lights. While a giant part of me loved helping him, an equally giant part of me hated it. I hated the pressure of handing him the lights as I untangled them. I hated that he was on a rickety ladder that brought him two stories high to hang the lights! I hated even more that that rickety ladder was never level and as he moved up and down the ladder I feared so much that he would fall! He never did fall and the lights always looked great.

Damien did an awesome job and he was able to do it in relatively fast time! When he had hung all the lights, we all came outside to see him plug them in! We gave him a drum roll (just like they do in one of my favorite movies National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation), and wouldn't you know that as quickly as they lit up- they went out! We had to laugh because this is just what happens in the movie! After much deliberation and some checking and re-checking, we realized that there was too much electricity running through one extension cord. Once we changed this, the house glowed and looked so pretty! It really got us in the Christmas spirit and I was so happy that finally, we got to have lights on our house!