Overwhelming

Just after dark we walked through our neighborhood to capture some photos of the decorations. The house that I wanted to photograph had not yet flipped the switch, so their yard was still dark. We walked on around the corner.

This house is on the main drive through our tract of homes. This is probably year four or five that they have outfitted their entire yard in every possible Christmas decoration. The first year they presented this, the Chipmunk Christmas Song played all evening, every evening, late into the night. They cover their entire yard with white sheets to give the allusion of snow. They do use a brown tarp for the ground of the manger scene. It's difficult to capture all of this. Considerable maintenance must be given to it daily to keep it all functioning--almost every scene in their yard has something that is mechanically driven to give it motion. When the Santana winds blow or rain pours, like last year, it must add to the upkeep.

I thoroughly enjoy that I can look through all of my blips from last December when I did a much better job of capturing the mood of Christmas all throughout that month than I have been so far this December. I'm hoping that finishing the semester and saying goodbye to my students this coming Tuesday will help to launch me into this season. I love this holiday, but so far I am distracted. Five more essays to grade and I'm done with that chore.

Tomorrow evening we are scheduled to see a live presentation of Handel's Messiah by a 150 member choir and orchestra. I've wanted to do this for years. Oh boy!

And as I mentioned on yesterday's blip. Mr. Fun did see the elcipse of the moon very, very early this morning. He took a zillion photos so I'd be sure to see it too.

Good night from Southern California.
Rosie (& Mr. Fun), aka Carol