Sunday, December 19
The weekend
I like weekends. While Connor yesterday went with some drummer friends from school (and Kristen, and their music teacher) to the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder to bang on buckets and try to raise money for a set of marching snares, Reade and I cleaned house a bit and then hung our Christmas lights. I like Christmas lights, too, and I always have. I remember as a kid my dad hanging a single strand or two of multi-colored lights around the front edge of our house, and sometimes into the courtyard. We lived on a hill, and had a swell view of Santa Rosa, and you could see that strand of lights from Fourth Street when you drove around downtown, if you knew where to look
I also loved going to Christmas Tree Lane and Candy Cane Lane, a few blocks of spirit on opposite sides of town where everyone (I'm sure some were forced...) put up lots and lots of lights, some had plywood cutouts of Christmas figures and a few played music outdoors. It was magical. We have a similar street here on the edge of nowhere, but it doesn't have a clever name. It seems a lot more people hang lights now, than 35 years ago when I was kid, and my kids enjoy driving around looking at lights, seeking out the crazy houses where you still go 'whoa' because it's just too much. We have a traditional Christmas Eve drive where we listen to seasonal music and take in the sights.
I also remember as a child loving to lay on the floor of the living room, with the house lights off but the tree lights on, and just staring at the colored lights, squinting to make them fuzzy, and so on. We finally decorated the tree in our house this year, after it standing naked in the corner since Tuesday, us humans too busy to find time to decorate it. But we got that done yesterday, too, when K and C returned home (with a good experience and a mere $12 for the efforts), and then we went and saw the Lemony Snicket movie. The sets and production values were awesome, love the feel of the world they created, and while the first 45 minutes or so were just too much of Jim Carrey, once that was out of his system (it seemed) and the story was allowed to progress, the film grew on me. I liked it; would give it a B, or an 8, or three stars, or the little guy would be sitting up in the chair clapping (but not jumping out of it), or a thumbs up, or a silver star, or a red ribbon. THen we came home and watched (or slept through, in my case) The Philadelphia Story with Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn and James Stewart.
I also loved going to Christmas Tree Lane and Candy Cane Lane, a few blocks of spirit on opposite sides of town where everyone (I'm sure some were forced...) put up lots and lots of lights, some had plywood cutouts of Christmas figures and a few played music outdoors. It was magical. We have a similar street here on the edge of nowhere, but it doesn't have a clever name. It seems a lot more people hang lights now, than 35 years ago when I was kid, and my kids enjoy driving around looking at lights, seeking out the crazy houses where you still go 'whoa' because it's just too much. We have a traditional Christmas Eve drive where we listen to seasonal music and take in the sights.
I also remember as a child loving to lay on the floor of the living room, with the house lights off but the tree lights on, and just staring at the colored lights, squinting to make them fuzzy, and so on. We finally decorated the tree in our house this year, after it standing naked in the corner since Tuesday, us humans too busy to find time to decorate it. But we got that done yesterday, too, when K and C returned home (with a good experience and a mere $12 for the efforts), and then we went and saw the Lemony Snicket movie. The sets and production values were awesome, love the feel of the world they created, and while the first 45 minutes or so were just too much of Jim Carrey, once that was out of his system (it seemed) and the story was allowed to progress, the film grew on me. I liked it; would give it a B, or an 8, or three stars, or the little guy would be sitting up in the chair clapping (but not jumping out of it), or a thumbs up, or a silver star, or a red ribbon. THen we came home and watched (or slept through, in my case) The Philadelphia Story with Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn and James Stewart.
