December 19th - no school Monday. PERFECT!

If you don't know -

I'm not a morning person.

I love having my kids home from school because:

I hate the stress of trying to be a good mom and still get everyone out the door

dressed

on time

medicated (*don't judge)

lunch packed

homework complete

clean

and now that the boys are older - smelling clean is harder 

and more important than you may think

I also like having them around to make them do chores 

because I love them so much

I like sleeping later

I like being in my pajamas until 10am

and I hate HOMEWORK!

Monday was a good day!

I read this blog (click here- it's a must read)  and laughed so hard .....

This chick and I share some DNA somewhere up the tree.

For Michael's first Christmas (oh, how I wish I had a photo)  my neighbor and I -

(who shared a roof on one of those "A / B" style houses in Port Hueneme)

created a shared Christmas experience on our connected houses.

Mike was deployed and could not:

a)  roll his eyes at the craziness

b) complain about the money I spent on Christmas lights

c) tell me that I did it wrong because I'm not an engineer

In later years - since I already bought aforementioned decorations....

I continued to put them out for several years before Mike finally put his foot down

on dragging them around all over the country as the Navy moves you around every

two Christmases.  

In San Diego - I think I lined the garage with some lights and called it done.  

Our house was two-stories and Mike put his foot down again on letting me get on the roof.

(For those who don't know - I have what he calls the "clumsy gene")

He refuses to let me do anything that might land me in the hospital because he 

knows that he would have to take care of the boys all alone for an unlimited amount of time

because he loves me SO MUCH and doesn't want to see me get hurt.

Mike did get on the roof a couple of years and do the lights for me - 

It makes me so very happy when he will agree to join in on my projects.

I have lots of them....

So I said all that to say this (and because I have ADD)

the boys and I drove to the "HOME STORE" on base and bought Christmas lights.

The benefit of being a procrastinator is that everything is ON SALE!

It's awesome!

They were super, excited bribed with video games to help and we completed
the task in a record time - before dark.

When Mike got home -
I told him all he had to do was connect everything to a power source -

Because I am sure things were not set-up the way an engineer would have done it -
I DID NOT follow him outside just in case there was a self-dialog going on about
how crazy I am.

and here you go.....Christmas!

Seriously.....that must be like $5000 worth of Christmas lights.
If I had an extra $5000 - I would pay off my kids braces,
not buy Christmas lights.

And although I do think that Christmas display above is totally, rockin' cool...
Here is $100 worth of Thornton lights look like....