Decorating home for Christmas, a light spectacle

In our house, Christmas rolls into town the day after Thanksgiving. It's been that way for years. The advent calendar emerges from storage, the Santas, and candy canes, and other whimsical winter accouterments find their places throughout the house. And every year Andy faithfully sets the stage with his yearly Christmas Light Spectacular.

But free-time is scarce around here of late. So for the past three weeks Andy has been playing mind games about his plans for stringing Christmas lights. I ask him what his design plan is, he responds with, "I don't think I have time this year" or "I'm too tired to get motivated." Ignoring his earlier excuses, I later ask him when he plans to get started on the lights and he responds, "No seriously. I'm not doing them this year."

Andy maintained his position even when his competition began to hang lights the day before Thanksgiving.

Reverse psychology did the trick, and I was practically begging him to get outside and put up those lights! The catch to his whole show was that I had to agree to give him the estimated 15 hours he needs to do it, with no hassling or complaining.

The thought of Christmas without lights was a dark and disappointing one, so I agreed to his terms and Andy got started around 2:30 this afternoon. He's been outside for 7 hours, and remains there as I type.

Yippee!
Stay tuned for pictures!