Oh....Christmas Lights...How I hate thee..

My parents taught me that HATE is a strong word and I should use something else like dislike. Well, my parents also forgot to mention that Christmas lights are a pain in the you know where and are worthy of the word HATE!(p.s I still love Christmas lights)

Okay, let me begin....

So the weekend before Thanksgiving we decided to hang our lights since we knew we'd be gone all thanksgiving weekend and could have them up and running for the Monday after the holiday. We went up on the roof and measured where we would like all the lights. Single strand lights over the garages and icicles over the front of the house. Sounds simple. We needed 60' of sting lights and 36' of icicles. We get down and go to the store. We buy all the same brand so the color will match, everything is LED and everything is warm white.

So when we get home and we get up on the roof again and start hanging, making sure to leave the "male" plug-in on the end we needed to connect for power. As we are finishing up the garages we find out the 70' of string lights we got are not going to cover the 60' of garage. We are about 3' short. So I head back over the roof to the beginning and start pulling everything tight in hopes we will gain back the 3' we need to reach the gutters...no such luck...we are still 2' short. So we get the brilliant idea to wrap all the icicles around the cord so they look like string lights until we get to the gutters. Done Deal.

So we continue on and hang all of the icicles lights. Plug in our extension cords and set the timer. We go to plug in the icicles lights and it's a no go...."Female/Female" plug-in...What!?! By this point it was getting dark and we had guests coming so we called it a day and said we'd fix it after the holiday.

Number of arguments accumulated to hang lights, go back and tighten lights, wrap icicles lights around cord for an extra 2' and then find out we can't plug it in = 3

Here I am ready to go and excited to get back up there and flip all the lights....oh how happy I still look...that won't last long!


So after thanksgiving we take down the icicles and turn them all around. We decided to start at the extension cord end so we wouldn't mess it up. As we are hanging and plugging in each set it begins to light up. The whole time we are thinking these warm white lights are looking pretty blue...We get to the single strand lights and plug them in....everything lights up, the moment of excitement! NO! It's the moment of getting mad...AGAIN! The lights are two different colors! Please see the picture below.



Number of arguments accumulated to re-hang icicles lights and find out the colors don't match = 2

Another week goes by and I climb up the ladder and take down the blue icicles and head back to the store to find warm white ones. Only problem, the store does not have any warm white icicles left....only twinkle warm white icicles...OK WHATEVER!!
I get home hang the new ones and all is right in the world of Christmas lights again. I decide to move forward with setting up the spotlights for the front. I'm moving around the extension cords when I get a call from my parents. I answer and decide I can multi-task and do the cords and talk on the phone at the same time. Just as I get to the corner of the house I drop the phone. Now, this typically would not be that big of an issue except I happen to be standing over the one open pipe around all of our home. Nothing but Net! I ran inside to grab a flashlight and see if I could see it and find a way to fish it out. It's gone...way gone...under ground...GONE! I had to run over to the neighbors to call Chris and ask him to stop and pick me up a new phone because there was no way mine was coming back.



Long story short....5 arguments later....the lights look great....and I lost my phone and all of my contacts on it.

Seriously, HATE may be a strong word....but I earned the right to use it in this situation!

Merry Flippin Christmas to All ;)