Traditions Late at Night

 If you haven't figured me out by now, I love celebration and I love tradition.  Holidays must be done exponentially, and each part must have meaning and significance along the way.  Christmas is my favorite for all the traditions I remember from growing up and from having a family of my own these last 8 years....
Tonight was the night we decided to go tour the local lights.  Jammies were donned, hot cocoa was poured, and we headed down to the bus stop to pick up Daddy.  The boys were jazzed - they have definitely inherited my enthusiasm for all things holiday.  It probably helped that their "snowman soup" was pretty much gone by the time the bus got to us.

We saw the quaint, the elaborate, the impressively brilliant, and even the audio-synchronized.  We gasped in awe and shrieked in glee...  And even let out a few loud giggles at this house::

I hope you can see the boy with his tongue stuck to the flagpole.  And then I hope you can cite the movie reference being pictured here.  If you cannot, then you are not familiar with another one of my less favorite traditions of Christmas in our family....
Back to the lights - Ethan is quite the "Oooooooooh!" guy. And then all of a sudden Lucas says, "You better top saying dat.  You say dat, de aliens will come and take you!"  And he was dead serious.
My favorite of Ethan's exuberant exclamations of the night was "Wait till you see the amazing!"  as he looked ahead down the street.
I remember going around as a high-schooler with my friends, enforcing the same tradition.  Only, we enjoyed being critical and judging houses - our favorite adjective being "tacky".  We were very picky on how lights were to be done - which ones were to be used - how many should be used.
Not so now.  Once I had Ethan and saw his face absolutely light up at the gaudiest, craziest displays, all that judgement fell away.  Now I just see pure joy in people's decorations.  We sing Christmas carols at the top of our lungs and Ooooooh away, all the while watching out for the aliens.  It's a wonderful life.