White Christmases: quaint or overrated?

This past weekend, Owen and I went to our little town’s Christmas Open House. On this night, the downtown merchants stay open late and have special sales and serve all sorts of little treats and goodies. And booze. You can get anything from spiked coffee and cocoa to wine and champagne, if you’re willing to brave the crowds. It’s a pretty good time, kicked off by the quintessential small town ceremony: the lighting of the community Christmas tree. There’s also the K of C selling cocoa and monster-brats, the community bean pot to benefit local charities and the high school’s steel drum band playing in the street.

There’s not much more surreal then huddling up to listen to a steel drum band play in 20-degree temperatures with 20 mph winds swirling the snow. In fact, the band had to take a break after every song to clean the snow off the drums. Apparently, it throws the sound off. And, apparently I’m tone deaf. In any case, imagine all the fun of listening to a steel drum band without the hassle of going someplace warm to do it. And, if you’re really lucky like me, you can wake up the next morning and, instead of having a sunburn, you can have a windburn. Yay!

We also did our holiday decorating this past weekend. As always, our Christmas tree sports an eclectic combination of vintage/antique ornaments, homemade ornaments from our childhoods, sports ornaments and modern licensed character ornaments. It’s very “us.”

Our outdoor decorating did not go quite as planned. Having only enough extension cords to do one bush, it was our determination that all the lights would go on that bush. It was also our determination that we did not have a ladder, and so all the lights go about as high up as Owen could reach. Then he got the bright idea of throwing the spool of lights up over the bush to put some lights up higher. Then he promptly ran out of lights. The result? Let’s just say that, in the dark, with the lights on, our bush looks like somebody spilled a bottle of Viagra right underneath it.

P.S. We got 14” of snow last night. We both got stuck trying to get to work this morning. We’re supposed to get 5” – 10” more by 6 tonight. We got a new snow blower this afternoon. Yay!