If you have recently dropped in on our special brand of crazy, you may not know just how much of a Christmas freak I am. I like lights. A lot of lights. A LOTTA LOTTA lights. And trees. Oh, how I love me some Christmas trees. I love me five Christmas trees these days, and fully intend to love me more when we eventually move. One for every room, baby.

In order to accommodate my crazy, I usually start decorating shortly after Halloween. I catch a lot of crap about it, but there is simply no way to get everything up in one or two days. I need a few weeks at MINIMUM, and since we go out of town the week of Thanksgiving, in my perfect world everything is done before we go so that I can flip the switch on it all as soon as we get back.

This year, however, has been out of control. I'm soooooo far behind. In fact, when it became obvious that I was so behind that our household Light Up Night was going to have to be sometime in February, I decided to take a day off from work especially to put up lights out in the yard. Monday was the big day, and I woke up bright and early, threw on some junk clothes, and headed out.

Then quickly remembered that Mother Nature HATES me.

You know how I've been crying about the lack of snow? Um, yeah. I'm STILL crying about the lack of snow. I am open to two options when it comes to the weather on Christmas light days--it can be freezing cold and snowing (if it's going to be cold, I demand snow) or it can be 70 and sunny. There is no option for 40 and raining. NO OPTION.

And yet, that's exactly what I got. It rained and rained and rained all day Monday. You know what goes really well with electricity? Water. I would tell you how many times I got a nice little jolt of power through my rain-soaked gloves, but I have no idea how many times it happened. I think I lost the ability to count past ten right around the 8th shock. Or maybe it was the 9th. It was definitely before the rain managed to soak it's way all the way through my jeans.

I managed to put up about 5000 lights total, which is nowhere near where I need to be. I'm not sure how I'm going to find time to finish, but I can guarantee I will because when Alexis came home and saw the sad little light display she said, "Momma, it's so bootyful! LOOKY!" and stood in the yard for over ten minutes just marveling at the pretty lights.

Girl, you ain't seen nothing yet, but you will.