Over the weekend Kate “slaved” away at Nana’s house, going to the movies and helping her decorate the front yard for Christmas. The front walk is lined with candy canes, large wreaths adorn the doors and windows, a large elf standing in the yard perches several colorfully wrapped packages upon his shoulders, street signs point the way to “Santa’s Workshop” and the “Reindeer Stables” and a cheerful lantern on a post greets visitors with a bright “Welcome.” The tree trunks are carefully wrapped with lights and the large pillars at the front porch are wrapped with garland and adorned with big red bows… it’s Christmas time at mom’s house.

It is a true work of art especially given that much of the lawn art is handmade and painted by my mom and brother.

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care and no creature stirred aside from the 2 cocker spaniels and one disgruntled cat.

Until yesterday…

As I took the boys back to school after lunch I noticed that the neighbors across the street from my mom were adding to their Christmas decorations. Last year they had spiral christmas trees and lollipops lining the front walk… nary an elf or santa or light strung tree trunk could be found.

Over the weekend the spiral trees had gone up as did the lights lining the front of the house. After my mom spent the weekend decorating the neighbors had apparently done some “over the fence peeking” and decided to add the finishing touches to their front yard YESTERDAY.

Now, I should (but obviously didn’t) preface this whole neighbor thing by saying that this is one of “those” highly competitive families. The type that have all of their kids in Little League and Dad coaches (admirable, sure) by screaming at the kids throughout the entire game and acting as if an ivy league scholarship depends on the outcome of a Little League game between 7 and 8 year olds. (No offense to those of you whose children are involved in sports, I do know that there are some normal families who are involved for all the right reasons, honest).

So as I rounded the corner I found Mr. & Mrs. Competition adding the SAME EXACT lit candy canes that my mom had lining her walk to their own version of the north pole… which now sadly included not one but THREE FREAKING SANTA CLAUSES. How is that for confusing the kiddies all in the sake of running over the Joneses with a ride-on lawn mower?!?!?

After stuffing candy canes in the bushes and around the giant plywood santa and the giant inflatable santa as well as the wooden santa head on a stake (guess that is the cannibal santa) they proceeded to wrap every tree trunk in their yard with lights (he’s like 7 feet tall are you telling me he couldn’t reach up and hang some IN the trees?) including down the side of the house (they are on a corner lot with a useless strip of lawn running down the side of their house and backyard) that faces my mom’s front yard.

My mom is convinced that this last little item on their list was a personal snub (not wanting to be too hasty, I had already reached this conclusion with the candy canes and multiple Santas) after seeing this she is now realizing when their ill-behaved twin Jack Russell Terriers from hell broke loose from the back yard and pillaged my mom’s cat’s dishes and ended with a giant puke-fest on her front porch that this was done purposely to delay my her annual decorating plans.

Last night she called shrieking that they were outside “gloating” standing in front of their house with all three brats kids in tow gawking at their own yard complete with all the appropriate (or in this case, innapropriate) ooo’s and ahhhh’s.

This means war… mom is now determined to go BIGGER and BRIGHTER than ever, we’re talking National Lampoon Christmas Vacation porportions here.

My suggestion… we go to the roof! Mr. 7-Foot-Tall-With-A-Competitive-Streak is obviously afraid of heights.

Related Tags: Christmas, Christmas spirit, decorations, lights, competition, neighbors, Santa, Santa Claus, Nana

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Other posts you might like:

1. Pulling A Grizwold
2. The Start of the Christmas Season…