Christmas Lights of Austin

Well, here we all are...Mom's copying down a recipe, Rebekah's replying to email, Dad is watching a football game, Alvaro is napping (shocker!) and I'm wanting to ice the cutout cookies but everyone is busy and I have to wait for them because they want to help. Isn't that always the way with me? I'm ready to get stuff done RIGHT NOW, always on a schedule to get the next thing done...why can't I just be relaxed and not care if there are a couple of minutes of down time?

In a previous post I said that we were going to see the 37 1/2 street lights and so we did last night. The temperature plunged to 40 or so with a wind that wouldn't let my dad keep his cap on. We decided to walk the street rather than drive it so that we could take advantage of the offers from the homeowners who offered us to come into the back yard and get some hot chocolate...I do love this town! The first house had a 10 foot dinosaur made of chicken wire and foil with a strobe light in it's mouth. The back yard was complete with two toilets with yellow lights in the bowl. Almost every resident of the street had some amazing, truly tacky and sometimes even tasteless display. Lights, beer cans as ornaments, a garland made of Jack Daniels bottles, a sock monkey nativity (wow!) and even a dead marlin over some guys front door that had CDs for scales. ah...Austin. I guess my favorite was this cycle covered in lights. The wheels even turned. All the time we were walking, people talked to each other even though we didn't know each other. People let strangers help their kids over strands of lights in order to get a picture. I had one of those most embarrassing moments when in my excitement over people just loving people, I walked up to someone's house and almost walked in when my sister asked a guy on the porch if everyone is invited in he said, "no sorry, this is a private party". ooops :) We all had a good laugh and there was no harm done. I just kept walking with my free chi tea to see what political statement in lights I might see next.