This year Dad put up the Christmas lights with no kid helpers. In fact, Dad probably hasn't put up the lights for a while as you in turn have taken over that tradition (job). Think back to your first memories of Christmas lights. When were you allowed to get on the roof and help?
Now that several of the family have your own homes, share what you are doing to decorate. How about the college apartments?
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I know I have unfair advantage but I decided to be the first this time. So there!
The house I grew up in was a ranch style house and our Christmas lights consisted of a single string of large multi colored lights hung along the front. Sound familiar? My bedroom faced the front of the house so the glow of the Christmas lights came in through my sheer pink window curtains and created a beautiful glow in my room. I had a habit of staying up late to read. I had a reading lamp on the headboard of my bed. That and the Christmas lights made my room a cozy place. I also remember walking down the hallway in our home. I would glace in each room and see the Christmas lights coming in the windows.
I tried to add that cozy Christmas feeling to my dorm room in college. I remember this caused one of the biggest fights with my roommate, Valita. The country was in an energy crisis and she felt it was a waste of electricity to have Christmas lights. I considered it a sacred tradition. We compromised. We strung lights around our dorm window and only plugged them in for a short time each night.
When Dad and I got married we both wanted to decorate our apartment. We bought a live tree and a string of lights. We have added more decorations over the years but one thing has remained much the same as my childhood: we have a single string of multicolored lights across the front of our home.
The first picture in this blog was taken at our first apartment in Provo. Dad and I had just finished putting up our Christmas tree and were looking out our second-story window for any sign of reindeer.
I was always jealous when Kaylene and Preston got to help put up the christmas lights. The idea of being up on the roof was very awesome. The first time I did it I remember walking around the roof and looking through the skylight window at everyone just to be cool. I think I still enjoy it for the most part only it is not so much fun in the freezing cold to do more than one house.
This year, my rooomates and I are excited about decorations. We have a string of small colored lights that we are putting up and we hope to get some kind of tree. (porbably very small, fake, and maybe made out of lights wrapped around something random) We have also created paper decorations out of some colored paper amanda had and we cut out christmas pictures from magazines and put them in our window that faces out to a cement wall. It's fun.
I always enjoyed bring on the roof at any time and i have done so many times through the years for more than just putting up light. I never limited myself to just our house either. Ive been on the church roof, all my friends roofs, roofs of places Ive worked. I have made plans to get on some of the roofs here at school but I don't know how to get up to some of them yet. On my mission I would find that my area were so unpopulated that there weren't any building over one story tall. In one area the tree on the complexes property was the tallest object around so you guessed it, I climbed it and got to see uninterrupted for miles around.
I enjoy Christmas decorations. I like putting them up at home. If I'm away from home I don't really do anything unless somebody else provides the decorations. In fact the only decorations at my place are from the girls that come by the prank us or ask us out to dances or something of the like. So im hoping my future wife is ready to take the lead on decorations otherwise our place will remain clean and unchanged.
My favorite Up on the House Top" story is not Christmas related. It was during high school when everyone got paintball guns. We made up a game where one person will go into the back of the garden all dressed up in camo and a paintball mask. His goal was to make it from one side of the yard to the other without getting spotted by the people on the roof. Oh yea, the people on the roof had a paintball gun to shoot them with. Basically if you got shot you lost. I don't think I ever made it but it was a fun game. Thinking back I wonder what people might of thought driving by on Hampden. Well it was probably only the truckers who could see anyway.
Ashlee and I did get some Christmas decorations this year. We got a little tree with lights and I think there are 3 ornaments on it. We are getting better year after year.
Hanging Christmas lights on the roof was fun work. Emily and I hung our new Christmas lights this year. We found that the new LED lights don’t look quite right. Blues come out purple so it looks like we have Halloween lights up. Oh well. Preston reminded me of several other fun roof top adventures. In high school when I worked nights at the Dunhill Company as a telemarketer, I found my way onto the roof one night. The next day the boss called me into her office and told me we had been spotted. I did not get fired though so no big deal. Later David Bond and I would explore abandoned buildings in downtown Denver. The roof was usually the end goal. At BYU I was able to get onto a lot of roofs. One was the Harold B Lee Library. When I lived at the Elms we found a way to get unto the roof of the building next door, the Terrace. We somehow got a TV up there and watched a movie on the roof. Of course at Carriage Cove I got on the roof often to hang my movie screen. I even installed some eye hole screws from the roof to hoist up the movie screen.
Also, once Aaron Moss and I were planning on jumping from his roof. Right before we did it his mother walked outside and saw us. "What are you doing?" she calmly asked. We reluctantly told her. She folded her arms and said, "well, lets see it." We lost all our nerve and probably went back down the way we came up if I remember correctly.
Climbing on roofs seems to loose some of the luster with age. I had no problem steping on the top of the ladder to get on the roof eventhough plainly etched on the metal of teh top is imprented "this is not a step". Somehow cleaning the gutters to put up the lights and leaning over the shingles just seems to create a vision of a somersalut onto the ground. I am sure I will be up on the roof top many more times and it is cool to look around but I am never sad to turn it over to another.
Christian and I put Christmas lights up on the house top this year for the very first time together. And even though I was slightly nervous that we could lose our lives at any point, I really did enjoy it.
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