The Living Room Times

If you’re wondering why I wasn’t live-blogging or live-tweeting the BCS selections Sunday evening, the above video is your answer. While the college football gods were conspiring to give us TCU vs. Boise State in the Tostitos Die-Cinderella-Die Bowl, Becky and I were busy hosting the 15th (give or take) Annual (more or less) Loy Family Christmas Lights Extravaganza. It’s the continuation of a tradition that dates back to my childhood — here’s video of selected ceremonies from 1995-2008 — and tonight we brought it to our new house in Denver, the first major party/event we’ve hosted here.

It took weeks of preparation, but we pulled it off. The lights were a hit, as were Becky’s homemade cookies, wassail, and various other goodies.

The main event, of course, was the countdown to the lights at 5:30 PM. The video of the countdown was taken from four different cameras: one in our great room, one on the stairs facing the tree, one in our bedroom looking down on the back yard, and one in my car looking in at the front porch (which was unfortunately obscured somewhat by snow that had fallen on my car window). The view from the car was also broadcast live, via our house intranet, to the TV screen in the living room, which a couple of our IT-oriented friends found terribly amusing. 🙂

The one minor snafu involved the timing of the Christmas music that was supposed to accompany the lighting (it’s always the music that gets messed up!), but as you can see in the video, nobody seemed to notice, nevermind care. All in all, the whole thing was a smashing success, not least because of the large and enthusiastic audience — easily my biggest crowd for a Christmas lighting ceremony since dozens of dormmates crammed into my tiny Trojan Hall room freshman year, and probably even bigger than that. There were certainly more little kids than ever before, thanks to Becky’s army of mommy friends. We had wee ones ranging from weeks-old babies to 18-month-old triplets to 5- and 6-year old boys rampaging around the house. It was utter chaos, but in a good, fun way. 🙂

Oh, and for those familiar with the tradition of the “Light Nazi speech,” here’s a video of the 1999 original and the 2009 tenth-anniversary edition.

Below is a photo showing part of our great room and front hallway, including (at right) our glorious 3-foot Christmas tree, lit up with brilliant LED lights and safely nestled atop our entertainment center, high above the fray of toddler-world below. 🙂

Here’s a closer view of the tree, which is just about perfectly Loyette-sized. If you look closely, you can see the U.S.S. Enterprise ornament near the bottom right:

On the other hand, here’s a wider panoramic view, stitched together from a series of photos, showing virtually our entire great room:

Larger version here. You can also see, in the new blog masthead, a similarly constructed panoramic shot of our back yard. Here’s a closer view of the LED-lit tree and some other features in the yard:

The lights aren’t National Lampoon-worthy, but I figure we’ll be living in this house for many Christmases to come, so I’ve gotta give myself some room to “top myself” each year. By the time Loyette and Loyacita are teenagers capable of being thoroughly embarrassed by their dad’s silly countdown tradition and overly ostentatious light displays, watch out. 🙂