The Griswald (um, I mean OUR) Family Christmas

Years ago we watched the movie National Lampoon's "Christmas Vacation" in which Clark Griswald (aka Chevy Chase) sucks the power grid dry with his ostentatious holiday light display.

My husband swore while watching this movie that he would never put up Christmas lights.

And then we had kids.

Who begged him incessantly to put up lights.

Then about 5 years ago our next door neighbors put up over 20,000 lights in their yard along with various decorations. Not one to be out done, he finally caved.

And now he is in full-on Griswald mode. The first thing he does the morning AFTER Christmas is to make a run on all the stores to buy decorations for next year. Cuz although he is competitive he is also cheap. (Seriously---some of those decorations are super big bucks!) He recently made a SCORE at a garage sale getting loads of stuff for a steal.

He also keeps talking about wanting to make giant painted cut-outs of Santa, his sleigh and all 8 reindeer to put on the roof. And yammers on about stapling cotton batting on the roof to look like snow. Luckily he is not THAT ambitious.

Our neighbors are actually starting to put up their decorations as I type (and my oldest son has 'defected' to help them. That always goes over well....)

Tomorrow is "D" Day for our house, the D standing for decorating. I think he may have even drawn up a schematic. I am not kidding. It is honestly getting that complex. We live on a small, quiet cul-de-sac and only during the holidays do we have cars driving down our street to gaze upon the wonderment that is making all PG&E bigwigs smile. I have to admit. It is pretty amazing even if it is not at all environmentally sound.

Hopefully the rest of the neighborhood has their generators charged up.

I'll post some pictures over the next few days. Assuming we have enough power left to charge my camera battery.