We drove to my sister’s this last weekend for a little getaway and because her neighborhood goes nuts with Christmas decorations. Seriously, people come from all over the area and drive through or park and walk around. There are probably 75 houses or so and maybe two don’t have decorations. They also dress up the light poles, sidewalks, and other areas that are community property. It’s great and the boys get so excited and talk about it to anyone who will listen. It was a great trip, short, but we had such a fantastic time.

While we were there Jay and I had a major bonehead moment. It was cold so I asked Jay to start a fire, being the great camper he is he always makes a good one. My sister didn’t seems to have any fire starting material though so I dug around in the panty and found a stack of paper bags. It took three of them to get a little fire going and we (by that I mean he) were working pretty hard at it. I’ve seen him get a nice fire going after it had been raining at our campsite during the day so I was quite surprised that this process, in a fire place, was taking so long. He finally got the wood to almost start and I was just heading off to get another bag to burn when I noticed it. The silver key sticking out of the wall that turns the gas on in the fire place. This came after I had to call my sister at work to figure out how to turn the lights on in the living room.