Now that Thanksgiving is over I got to decorate the house for Christmas. My husband won’t allow me to decorate for Christmas before Thanksgiving, so to keep the peace I impatiently wait.

I love to decorate but I admit to being a little competitive.

After I’m done with my decorations I take a long look at my neighborhood to make sure that they are not “out-decorating” me.

If someone has “out-decorated” me, without getting too gaudy, I may add a couple strings of lights or maybe another display. I promise you will not be able to see my house from a satellite floating around in space.

Most of the time I have to do the decorating myself because my husband hates decorating. This year though, I convinced him he had to because the grandkids will be at our house for Christmas. So he dragged the ladder out and hung lights for me without grumbling too much.

We still haven’t got a Christmas tree up yet. We have decided to get a real tree this year because they are less expensive than the artificial ones. I had an artificial tree but it seems to have disappeared. I asked my husband if he would like to go out and cut a tree down, but he wasn’t real enthused with that idea. I thought that tramping through the forest looking for the perfect tree would be great fun especially since it has been so warm. But no.

Speaking of this warm weather, it is rather pleasant decorating outside. Putting up lights when the temperature is below zero in snowsuits, gloves and snow boots is not easy.

When we put up our decorations this year we were sweating because it was so warm, but we didn’t complain.

I used to have a lot more decorations but during my moves from North Dakota to Alaska to Wyoming and finally Colorado, I seem to have lost a few tubs of them, much to my husband’s delight.

Between the tubs of Fourth of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas decorations in the garage there is not much room for anything else., which is probably why my husband doesn’t like holiday decorating. And, come to think of it, maybe he is the reason that my decorations are disappearing. Might be time to equip the garage with a video camera. ❖