Christmas Lights

Princess and Prima Donna

Teach forgot her camera so you get cell phone pics, sorry!

You have probably guessed by now that my sweetie and I have a slight obsession with Christmas lights. Since we both grew up in small towns during the ‘70s, we believed that anyone with a single strand of lights had to be either rich or Santa Claus himself!

My parents used the same set of lights for as long as I could remember. It’s amazing they didn’t burn the house down. They burned too hot to touch, in fact I remember being burned more than once when we were moving around the Christmas ornaments on the tree. And rather than put water in the tree stand, my mom weighed it down by filling it from our huge can of marbles.

My parents always bought a live tree from the neighbor across the street from Grandma’s house. They would cut 50 or 60 trees every year on Thanksgiving weekend and then just sell them in their backyard. We were good friends (their son, Mike, is the one who saved me from drowning in the irrigation ditch), and they always saved a little 4-foot tree for me. I’m thinking I paid between $3 and $5 for it, but that was lots of money in 1975.

Drama Queen and Princess

Dazed or dozing, can't tell which...

I hauled that little tree up to my room and created my own Christmas. It bugged my dad to have to come upstairs to open the gifts from me, but Mom always managed to get him to come. He likes to run things when it’s time to open packages. There was no ripping and tearing at our house…gifts were opened one at a time and in age order. We aren’t quite so strict with our kids, although sometimes I’d like to be. Occasionally I miss seeing someone open something that I was really excited about.

Anyway, back to the Christmas lights. Last night we headed down to Temple Square in Salt Lake City to see the display. It was amazing as always! We try to go every year and the kids love the time together. I wish I had pics of this one, but we got just inside the gates by the south Visitors’ Center and we were waiting for Bossy and her family to show up.

While we were waiting, we heard bagpipes belting out a Scottish tune. The Drama Queen and Princess started and soon I had six kids dancing a little Scottish jig…at least they thought it might be a Scottish jig…There were hundreds of people around and suddenly we were the center of attention! It was pretty silly.


The weather was nice as we wandered the grounds and out by the reflecting pools. Curly was so tired he could hardly keep his eyes open. We ended our evening at Menchie’s, enjoying frozen yogurt with the free coupons the kids earned in the PTA Reflections contest. Such fun spending time together…and the sights were way better than a single strand of lights.