Festival of Lights . . .

So, Erin, the kids and I all went out for the yearly looking at lights. As I haven't shared any for the last several days, I'll give you a few as the highlights.

First of all . . . a house we didn't go by, but I find the description written about it very funny!



This is my small semi detached house, it took me five years to get this far, collecting for cancer and to cheer people up, MERRY CHRISTMAS. Karl Grizwald

tehehe . . .I just get a hoot out of the fact that this is a true Griswald house!

I'm going to share with you 3 houses this evening.

Erin and I decided these people gave up on the decorating early on. In fact, Erin described it as a blue monster who threw up all over the place.



Yep, those blue rope lights, haphazardly thrown all over the bushes, with a good amount of them on the ground.

The next house . . . well, it's the house that started this driving around looking at houses tradition with Erin and I. It keeps getting more elaborate every year.



According to their sign (which looks darn professional), they have approximately 50,000 lights, power draw is 118 amps at its peak, 4.1 MILES of total wiring, Only $45 extra for the month in electricity . . .and the expression on a child's face . . . priceless. They have an FM Transmitter, so when you drive by and watch it (well, park in the coldesac and watch it), you turn to 107.3 and listen to the music the lights flash to. Yep, you heard me! You get more info about the house when you listen there . . .such as it takes them 12 hours to program what the lights are going to do for a 4 minute song! The kids absolutely love this house and would've stayed there all night if I would've agreed to it!

Wanna see a video? Watch Feliz Navidad on your own . . .my picture doesn't do this house justice! I was rushing because there was quite the line forming behind us. They do say to come back for more footage later. You'll find the video here if you scroll down a bit.

Okay, so I've given you several hints about our neighbor's house. On nights we're out and about, we *have* to go by at least twice. Sometimes the kids ask for more times around the block. And if the night is nice (like Sunday night was), we'll walk down to see it. The kids absolutely love this set up. It's been fun to see what all they add to it each year.



Seems like the first year it was just the tracks, the train, and the garland around the yard? Not for sure on that. Once again, this one picture doesn't do the display justice. I have a whole series of pictures, but one again, it would be easiest to lead you to their website, where they have several videos you can view .. . including the toy factory in action, and close ups of the train . . .and probably a history in pictures from where it started until now. You can view all of that here. If you will go down the left hand sidebar, you'll see a link for video clips.

For those of you who asked how I did the CDs, I used a program called exPressit. I saved a desaturated picture first, then dropped it into a file in the program. Really quite simple if you spend 5-10 minutes figuring it all out.

Oh yeah, that Grizwald house at the beginning . . . .you can find it, and many others here. Enjoy!