Cason's lights

This is our 5th Christmas in our house and we have never put up Christmas lights outside. Since Cason loves lights so much, we figured we should bite the bullet and put some up this year. We told Cason about a month ago and he was so excited, he asked me almost every day if we could go outside and put lights up. A couple weekends ago my dad came to visit. We went to Home Depot and Lowes that weekend to buy some lights. We decided to go with all blue LED lights and bought enough to go around the front and one side since our house is on a corner. Kelly took advantage of the beautiful weather that afternoon and got a good chunk of lights hung up while my dad and I helped attach clips on the ground. Several Christmas Vacation references were made during these few hours.





After two afternoons up on the roof, Kelly finished up the front and side of the house as we had intended. I thought it looked good. Kelly thought it was "a good start". He decided that it looked unfinished and we should go around the whole house since there is a street behind our house as well. So back to Lowes we went to buy them out of blue LED C9 lights. Kelly just finished up the blue lights a few days ago and they look pretty good. We don't like the lights that lead up to the top peak but if we take the bulbs out, the strand goes out. Apparently a few bulbs can be loose, burnt out, or missing but not that many. We might put electrical tape around those or something so they look nicer when lit.

In this picture, you can also see our tree in the front window. It has blue and white lights on it as well. Cason was SO excited to put the tree up, Kelly and I not so much.





We also wanted to get Cason some lights to enjoy inside that he could turn on and off himself. He is a control freak and likes to be in charge of stuff like that. We initially bought him a string of snowflake lights that turn on and off with the push of a button. I hung them around the mantle for him but they played music. The problem with that is the music was a lot louder at home than at the store. And Cason would turn them on for about 2 seconds and then turn them off immediately. About 100 times a day. He said he didn't want to waste the batteries and that's why he couldn't leave them on. So after hearing the first few notes of the song over and over again, I packed the lights up and returned them to Home Depot just 2 days after buying them.

So then Cason fell in love with some icicle lights that changed colors and had a remote. No music, perfect! So when Grandma and Grandpa came down, Cason insisted on going to Lowes to show Grandma. Grandma bought Cason the icicle lights and all was right in his world. We were going to hang them inside but there was no real way to attach them to anything indoors. They ended up fitting perfectly on the two open sides of our back patio so this way the boys can watch them from indoors. Cason loves being able to turn them on with the remote and he won't let anyone else have that important job. There are 14 different programs that you can switch between for the light show. At first he didn't want to run these much because he didn't want to waste batteries but I finally convinced him that they don't run on batteries. They look much more cool in person but here's an idea of what they look like.





And here is the back of the house from the street. You can see Kelly's blue lights and Cason's icicles. Pay no attention to the one blue light that's burnt out already.



The boys love to go outside after dinner when it's dark to look at the lights. Here is Rycie in Cason's shark hat and mittens. He loves all things animals and will run all over holding his hands up when he's wearing the shark mittens!





Oh and just for fun, here is Cason at church this past Sunday. About twice a year the 2-5 year olds come on stage to sing a song. I know Cason well enough by now to know that he won't sing or do the motions but I still get excited to see him up there and bring my camera. As expected, he didn't sing or do the motions but he did flash us a big smile when he saw Daddy wave at him.