Christmas Lights

I have two favorite things about Christmas. One is the Christmas music and the other is Christmas lights. The Christmas music is easy to come by, just pop in the CD or turn on the radio. In fact the radio stations started having Christmas music long before Thanksgiving. (Which I think was a little too early.) At church we sing Christmas hymns all month and have various activities where the Christmas hymns are sung or played. At our Relief Society Christmas dinner the two missionaries from our ward sang Silent Night, which was very good. Ron and I went to an activity last night that had great Christmas music. I hope everyone is taking the opportunity to participate in activities this month to enjoy the music of the season. The Christmas hymns bring a beautiful spirit with them.

Enjoying the Christmas lights takes more effort than enjoying the music. The lights around the house always take several steps- find them, untangle them, figure out what bulbs are burned out, find new bulbs, replace the bad ones, and then actually put them up. At this point this year, we are still trying to find them :) I have always loved driving around to look at the houses decorated with Christmas lights. Ron never has been very fond of that. When the kids were younger, sometimes he would go along for the ride and sometimes just the kids and I went. This year, I have a new plan. I'm going to try to figure out a good place to go see lights here in Houston and then Ron will want to go with me and he will have fun, because...

we will be able to go in his car with the top down. Only in Texas can you go look at Christmas lights in the convertible :) :) (My only other problem is whether we actually have a free evening to go do that- I still have lots to do before we are ready to go to Stillwater next week.)

PS-The picture I posted is of a tree near our church building. The picture did not turn out as well as I had hoped. But it is an amazing huge oak tree decorated for Christmas.