the ex-grinch

Many of you know that Christmas is my favorite time of year. Some of you also know that Pete loves Christmas as much as I do. It's the whole package that I love - the carols, the good-will, the lights and decorations. Yeah, especially the lights and decorations. Normally I go all out in my decorating. My old house on Prospect St. even made it into the Kalamazoo Gazette one year (I walked out to see why there was a man in my driveway taking pictures of my house to find out he was a Gazette photographer taking pictures of well decorated homes. I later got the picture mailed to me after that edition was published.) Ususally the decorating begins the week before Thanksgiving (a week I am traditionally on vacation) and takes at least a week to complete. This year is very unusual. We are living in 2 houses - Sturgis and Middlebury. I did not want to go all out at Sturgis, hopefully it sells. We are going to spend the holidays in Middlebury, but no room to store the decorations and I did not want to bring them here just to take them back to Sturgis. So this year we are understated in our usual decore. So I thought.

Mike on the other hand can not remember the last time he even put up a Christmas tree. Let alone decorated any part of the house or yard. Last week he helped me to hang garland (I should have known how little decorating he has done when I had to explain to him what garland is - "oh, the rope stuff". He has admitted that the house looks nice, the lighted garland is a nice touch and called himself a reformed grinch.

A couple of weeks ago my parents were here helping to hang cupboards in the new kitchen. Mom was looking out the window when she noticed that the Amish man from across the street who fences off an area of our yard to pasture horses was out taking down the fence for the winter with his young son (about 5 years old I think). I saw the boy checking out the decorations while he pulled out fence posts. My mom saw the dad checking them out. She said he looked as if he could not quite belive what he saw, and a couple of times did a double take. Have I mentioned yet that we are the last English house before the Amish neighborhood begins? Not many other decorations out here.