last night the austins came by our house caroling. they are great people and pam and i are both glad that we have gotten the chance to get to know them better over the past year. they have become a huge asset for the youth ministry.
after the austins sang to us, pam, the boys, and i started a new yearly tradition – looking for the tacky CHRISTmas decorations. we drove around our own and several other neighborhoods looking for the best example of a complete lack of taste in CHRISTmas decorations. i have come up with a theory for making the tackiest decorations. i believe that a yard’s tackiness is determined by the number of divergent CHRISTmas themes found within a single yard. the best yards where the ones in which you could see plastic nativity scenes, wooden cut-outs of disney characters, and blow-up santas. having a lot of stuff in your yard is important but if it all looks like it belongs together then you miss out on allot of the tackiness. lots of colored lights are definitely a most. yet the most important thing is still combining odd themes together.
we found a quite a few houses with just the right combinations of odd mixes. my personal favorites were the houses where extreme religious themes and cartoon characters were combined. there’s just nothing quite like seeing goofy and mickey mouse worshipping at the foot of baby JESUS. it makes me laugh even now just thinking about it. we have one neighbor who has a vast combination of themes and lights. the aurora that the CHRISTmas lights produce from down the block reminds me of driving up on a football field. i have a great deal of respect for people who will put so much effort into these things.
here’s a picture of one of the homes we enjoyed. it wasn’t the best home (my camera’s battery had died by the time we had made it to the really good homes) but it was a decent one.
in case you are wondering where santa is i figured i would post norad’s santa tracker. norad tracks santa so that we have some idea where he is. this is important to know because you have to plan your bed time around it. there always so much to do and so little time but you have to get to bed before the big guy gets to your house.