Why My House Looks Like We're Out of Town All Month

Last year I got really excited to set up our Christmas decorations and the tree and make a whole big fun day of it with Benjamin. That didn't work out. After much screaming and stressing and multiple breakages of formerly precious items, I vowed I'd never do it again. So this year I decided we'd put up all our decorations on Christmas eve and take them down on the 26th and save ourselves a lot of stress. However, as we've been driving around, Benjamin has noticed how festive other houses look compared to ours. We pass house after house with lights, over-sized candy canes, reindeer, and the oh-so-classy blow-up Santa in a hammock between two palm trees, and Benjamin asks, "Why we not have that, mommy?" So I compromised and decided to just put up the lights. How bad could it be, right? It's just some lights? What could go wrong? You would think I would no longer ask such a stupid question.

I got the box of lights out of the basement and the first thing the kids did was start playing tug-of-war with them. Then Bella tried plugging them into various outlets and Benjamin started running around the house with them banging against various walls and items of furniture. When I convinced them to leave the lights alone, they started to attack me while I attempted to put them up. I had kids on my back, kids playing tag around my legs, etc. I was ready to be done right then and there, but I'd committed and I was going to see this through. After an hour of stress and frustration, the lights were up. They looked okay, not great, but good enough. Then later on I started making dinner and the kids played in the living room. They seemed to be happy and were laughing, so all was good, right? Then I noticed Benjamin speaking as if he had something in his mouth. I went into the living room to see what he was eating and discovered the room was noticeably dimmer than it had been before. Then I noticed Benjamin had green color running out of the side of his mouth. "What are you eating?" I asked. "This," he said, as he spit out a bulb from the Christmas lights. He had unscrewed an entire set of bulbs and sucked off the color coating!!! "They didn't work right, so I fixed them," he declared matter-of-factly. After a stern discussion over the danger of playing with an electric string of lights and the danger of putting glass bulbs in your mouth AND the danger of eating synthetic color, I ripped all the lights off the walls and windows and put them back in the storage room. So much for Christmas cheer. Maybe our neighbors will just assume we're out of town. So although I'd love my living room to look like this:


In reality, it feels and looks more like this: