Hanging up the Christmas Lights

The day continued yesterday as I took my daughter and son for a bicycle ride and a trip to the park. This being Southern California outdoor activities are a year around duty. I believe in this part of Southern California we experience over 310 days of sunshine compared to other parts of the world that experience half as much. I must admit that having this much amount of sunshine does make the occasional dreary day something to be coveted but for the most part I will take going on a bicycle ride the day after Thanksgiving with my children over hiding in a house against the elements. Anyhow we had a wonderful time on the bicycle ride and at the park.

We undertook some softball pitching practice along with hitting practice and game of touch football. My daughter is so competitive it is almost startling especially when she competes against her little brother. Her little brother is fairly advance athletically for a 7 year old and my daughter can hold her own in certain sports (softball) in her age group; however; in a game of touch football there was a big discrepancy between brother and sister. Big sister doesn’t like to lose to little brother and she became increasingly frustrated when little brother kept scoring touchdown after touchdown. She had enough and launched the football at her brother’s head. Thankfully we were using a Nerf (soft) football because it caught little brother flush in the upper chest. Yes, I chastised my daughter while comforting a very shocked and stunned son. My daughter begrudgingly apologized and we continued for a few more minutes.

It was time to head home and we took a beautiful path around the local lake on our way back. This is a serene area and we cycled past many families walking their dogs, babies and children. I even cycled past a friend who I hadn’t seen in awhile. Life really is amazing and it was an amazing day hanging out with the children. We returned home and much to my surprise both my daughter and son wanted to continue the touch football game outside our house. No balls were thrown at heads and all was very good through and through. I believe there were even some laughs exchanged between brother and sister.

This morning I decided to take the day off from running. I wanted to spend as much time with my family and I was listening to my body which needed a few days off. I am in the middle of the training program and this week has been a little haphazard so it made sense to just take it easy for today and the weekend. We had a Sunday morning breakfast of waffles even though today is Saturday. We lounged around in the morning planning on getting out in the afternoon to hang the Christmas decorations. I have had the last two years off from hanging Christmas decorations and I was ready to get this down. In order for full disclosure I am not exactly enamored with hanging the Christmas decorations which encompasses of hanging the Christmas lights on the house; however; knowing where I was the last two Christmas seasons I have no complaints whatsoever nor should I ever.

Since the Christmas decorations haven’t seen the light of day in over two years getting started was a bit of a struggle. Additionally we are in a different house so hanging the Christmas lights required a little more planning than necessary. I decided on the route of “not killing myself!” to hang the Christmas lights on the house. We live in a two story house and yes, we used to live in a two story house but the two are designed differently. There are more peaks on this house and those peaks are much higher than the previous house’s. I had the plan in place and went to test the Christmas lights before hanging. I was very surprised to see that the lights seem to work very well because I expected the strands to be defective.

I started with the highest peak and this was a very slow process. I had to install the hooks and then hang the lights which took a very long time. I had to climb the ladder to its highest peak and was being very careful not to kill myself. I accomplished my goal of not killing myself and as it turned dark outside I completed hanging the lights. I plugged the lights in and as I turned them on I noticed that half of the lights looked great and the other half not so good. In spite of me testing the lights and the lights working perfectly something must have happened on the way up because half of the lights were out. Since it was already dark out I wasn’t about to hunt for the defective lights and I would undertake this at some other point. I had to laugh because normally I would have been very frustrated; however; putting everything in perspective half of the lights not working is no big deal and besides the half that worked looked beautiful!!!!