Outdoor Lights

One of today's projects was to put up the outside lights above the garage. Last year it took a while because I had to screw in all the little hooks. Because of that, this year the longest part of the job was finding the box of lights and hauling the ladder outside. I love that a one-time investment of time makes life easier in the future!

And so today I'm going to share some of the more memorable "hanging lights" experiences from the past. One that I remember is in 1992 when Wayne's Saturdays were all filled up, so I hung the outside lights myself one week day. One of our neighbors saw me and gave Wayne a hard time about it. I remember thinking it's a good thing he didn't know I was pregnant while climbing the ladder.

If you look closely you can see the lights. This picture was taken in January to show all the snow we got that year!

The kids helped in 1994, another year with a brand new house that needed hooks installed first.

Brad was justly proud of the results. Look, there's our crocheted wreath on the front door!

For yet another new house, we decided to let the teenagers take over the responsibility. And since they were the ones climbing the ladder, we decided they could even choose which lights to buy. If I had known they were going to pick red rope lights, I might have withdrawn that option, but at least they were unique and bring back fond memories.

We can be grateful that in all of our years of climbing ladders to hang lights, there have been no accidents.

Christmas 2012

Looking at these pictures reminded me that I didn't quite finish the "outside lights" job. I forgot that there are net lights in the closet to be hung still. Maybe we'll get to that on Saturday.