Christmas Light Installation in Installments

We thought we were way ahead of the game when we got our butts over to the hardware store the week after Thanksgiving and loaded up on rope lights and extension cords. (Simon came along as a consultant, but quickly got distracted by the Enormous Inflatable Holiday Objects aisle... and in the end we were lucky to escape without an eighty-dollar, five-foot-tall golfing Santa strapped to the roof of our car.)

We raced home eager to get started on all the crazy ideas we had for decorating our new porch. That first afternoon we got as far as unwrapping half the lights, plugging in the extension cords, discovering that the two different colors of rope lights we had bought could not be strung end to end because their plugs were incompatible (mind you, they were the same brand, just different colors), and realizing that we were going to need a powerstrip to make it all work. And so even though we'd gotten an early start, and despite frequent, insistent reminders from Simon, a week later the porch still looked like this:


Meanwhile it seemed like every other house on the street (and most of the trees) had been festooned with flashing, blinking, multi-colored strands of holiday cheer; it was getting to be a bit embarrassing. So last Wednesday I finally made it to the drug store and picked up a (very crappy) powerstrip, and after school Simon and I commenced work once again. He offered to take pictures, but became so unnerved by the near-fall he captured in this one that he could barely watch any more, let alone serve in a documentary capacity.


He decided to get to work on the treehouse instead:


Nice, eh? And all in one efficient, productive afternoon! Whose kid is that?

Meanwhile, I was headed in a promising direction, but nowhere near finished:


Two days later, I spent two more hours in the freezing cold and made a little more progress:


And the next morning I woke up determined to finish. Friday's experience had taught me a great deal about what worked and what didn't as far as fasteners, tools, and gravity-defying gymnastics, so things went much faster on Saturday. Still, I spent a good four hours out there, mostly hanging over the edge of the porch roof, offering up frequent, insistent prayers to Saint Venantius (who, according to Colleen, is the guy who protects you from falling off high places):



And here, at last, the results:


Note to everyone on Mead Street: We hope you like them, especially as it will probably be April by the time we get them down again!