I wish I could say this was the most exciting weekend I have had in quite some time, but unfortunately, that isn't the case. Last weekend I spent the majority of my time taking care of 
I swear I have been through about three or four boxes of tissues already. I'm kind of over it. This isn't the sickest I have ever been by a long shot, but it's just this constant annoyance that won't go away. I wouldn't mind so much if I could at least breathe, but I think we all know how that goes. Saturday and Sunday were probably my two worst days so far. I hope that it is mostly behind me now and I can start the path to feeling better.
I think the thing that bugs me about it the most is due to the lack of being able to breathe properly, I haven't been able to work out. Which wouldn't be a bad thing if I was sick in a way that my appetite was gone. However, my appetite seems to be okay, so I have been eating without burning calories like I normally would. I know it's probably best just to focus on getting better, but it still drives me crazy!
Friday night I was actually feeling well enough that we decided to take a drive and look at Christmas lights. This is something that we have started doing over the past five years or so as a way to get out and enjoy the holiday season. Typically we hop in the car or truck with a cup of hot coco or something like that and just drive around with Christmas music on looking at the lights. This year I replaced the coco with a box of tissues!
It's actually kind of surprising how few people decorate their houses for the holidays anymore. I remember when I was a kid, I feel like it used to be a much bigger deal. I'm not kidding when I say we drove for miles on some roads and didn't see a single Christmas light.
Thankfully, I was able to find a website from a local landscaping company that (with the owners permission) listed all of the houses that they had professionally decorated in the area. I center in a on neighborhood that had a dense population of homes that had been decorated by this company and that led us to the photos you see in this post.
As we were slow rolling through the neighborhood with just about every other car in the county,
Their quiet neighborhood was suddenly quite busy. We also noticed that the Home Owners Association (as there most certainly was one) did a pretty crappy job of keeping the roads clear of snow. We then surmised that might be by design to keep cars from flying through the area this time of year.
Either way, they did a really good job. You could tell there were trees on the outlawns that the association must decorate themselves, and then there were homes here and there that had went above and beyond for their own property.
It was probably the best area we found all night.
As we were heading back towards home, we came across this area where a couple of houses next to each other had went a little crazy with their lights. Unfortunately, I was driving too fast because there was a car right behind me for my wife to get a better shot than this. The big thing this years seems to be the permanently installed lights that go under your eaves. They are LED and you can change up the colors and pattern to match whatever theme or holiday you want.
We saw a lot of houses with these lights. Many of them were a simple red and white alternating pattern, but then there were others that had them synchronized to music or something else.
Friday night was probably the highlight of what turned out to be a pretty crappy weekend. I'll be happy when this cold is mostly out of my system and I can get back to normal.
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