Family Alive

I have to share this amazing Christmas light display

with you. If you CLICK

HERE and be patient while it loads (it’s a 4.9MB

file!), you’ll see the coolest synchronized light and

music display I’ve ever seen. Snopes.com verified that it is real and

said,

“This display was the work of Carson

Williams, a Mason, Ohio, electrical engineer who spent

about three hours sequencing the 88 Light-O-Rama

channels that controlled the 16,000 Christmas lights in

his annual holiday lighting spectacular (from Christmas

2004). His 2005 display includes over 25,000 lights that

he spent nearly two months hooking up. So that the

Williams’ neighbors aren’t disturbed by constant noise,

viewers driving by the house are informed by signs to

tune in to a signal broadcast over a low-power FM radio

station to hear the musical accompaniment.”

VERY COOL, in my humble opinion! I used to feel that

Christmas light displays could be tacky, but since I now

have a daughter that will say the cutest, “oh, wow” at

any lights or decorations she sees, we think anyone who

puts up lights is very cool:)

Almost Christmas morning at the

Toone house
The excitement just overcame us this morning:) We’d

ordered Analise’s Christmas present from EToys, and it

arrived yesterday in a huge box. We were very excited

to get her one, and only one, gift – the Fisher Price Little People A to Z Learning

Zoo. She has her Little People Ark and animals that she

plays with endlessly, and we just knew that 26 animals,

from A-Z with a mat that makes corresponding sounds

would be a hit. (In case you can’t come up with one

animal for each letter of the alphabet, here you

go!)

Since we are leaving next Saturday for

Wisconsin, not to return until Dec. 30th, we wanted her

to get a chance to appreciate it. Besides, both Brian

and I have gotten our Christmas presents from each

other, so Analise deserved the same! Anyway, she was

impressed by the snowman wrapping paper, and she needed

a little nudge to start tearing the paper off. But when

she saw the corner of the box with 3 of the animals in

view, she got really excited. We were not let down as

we opened it… she loves it! She got even more excited

as I opened each next bag of animals. She played with

it for hours before collapsing into a 2.5 hour nap.

When she woke up, she squealed with delight to find the

zoo and animals awaiting her in the living room. I know

what my family is saying, that we’re terrible for not

being able to wait or keep secrets, but let me tell ya,

there was not ANY less excitement in our household with

Christmas this morning! Here’s Analise, the

zookeeper:)

Santa Adventures
Wednesday morning we set out with Grandma Beverly to

visit Santa at the mall. When we arrived, though, Santa

was unavailable because he was having breakfast with

special needs kids. We decided to try the other mall in

town, since Analise was all dressed up for a picture

with him. When we got there, Santa was sweet and jolly

looking, and Analise was beautiful in her Christmas

dress. But she wouldn’t go near him and burst into

tears when he tried to hold her hand. Not even a sucker

could convince her he was nice enough. So there will be no picture of Analise with Santa this year, but we snagged this one in our rocking chair on the front porch when we got home.
PS – Brian just said, “No one’s going to read the blog that I posted now, because they’ll be so busy reading your fun one.” He wanted me to post a link to his, but maybe you could take a second and read his blog and even leave him a comment:) Thanks, y’all! Hope the joy of the Christmas season is filling your heart and home!