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Does your spouse get in the way of your setting up display?


Santas Helper

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I could never do it without my wife... The last three days she worked as hard as I did - untangling lights, putting them on trees building mini trees and always have a good idea to make things easier... Our entire living room turned into a build shop for props and I have full support for mounting cat 5 outlets on the outside wall - including the 1 inch hole drilled into the foundation. By now she is as addicted as I am :-)

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My wife is my biggest support with the lights. Although she doesn't understand HOW they work, she is right there to help me put things up and take them down. I have sequenced some songs (like a Nativity scene) at her request, and they look great. I couldn't do it without her. Besides, where else would I get the money, right?

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Today my wife helped me with connecting up the mega tree to controllers. We needed 35 mini extension cords under the tree and she made them all, and continued to wire another dozen elements in the yard. At the end of it all, she showed me how dry it made her fingers and that she has a conflict with stopping with the lighting or going out to buy more lights to add to the show! I heard her talking to her mom about how we have dark spots in the yard and she's gonna have to light those areas ASAP!

I am blessed!!!

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Today my wife helped me with connecting up the mega tree to controllers. We needed 35 mini extension cords under the tree and she made them all, and continued to wire another dozen elements in the yard. At the end of it all, she showed me how dry it made her fingers and that she has a conflict with stopping with the lighting or going out to buy more lights to add to the show! I heard her talking to her mom about how we have dark spots in the yard and she's gonna have to light those areas ASAP!

I am blessed!!!

That's awesome! Maybe best post this week.

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Have to say. Two years and I finally got her on board. We had a bunch of ppl come over last night to see the show. I hadn't finish all the mini trees yet so she acutally helped me finish them. don't know what changed her mind about the lights but I'm not going to complain. She even made a comment about what should we add for next year.

Amazing how things change. Only a month ago she hated me and to me to stop spending money on lights. Now she wants to fill the empty lot next door. I better start now. :D

Edited by dknahoolewa
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  • 2 weeks later...

As you can see by the picture she is my beautiful lady and a full supporter of my hobby . when i am working on the display she always brings me water or something to drink and snacks and also she is the decorator and tells me when something on the display does not look right so i can correct it before ths display goes operational .She is the love of my life and what mama wants mama gets , remember one thing guys when mamas not happy nobodys happy !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Edited by Godney
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I too get a lot of support from the wifey. Never a "how much" or "how many". I just wish her attention span was greater than a gnat! :P

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In the past there was some jealously over the time I spent on the lights. Now, she is getting into it and this weekend had me show her how to sequence a song. Yesterday when I got home from work she was 90% done on her first sequence, and she actually did a bang up job on it.

When we met we were in the same Fortran and Assembly classes, and she went on to be a senior accountant which means she spent every minute of the day dealing with spreadsheets, so the sequence editor didn't look scary to her.

I'm the luckiest man (who does Christmas lights) around.

Next year we'll see if there is a struggle for artistic control :)

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Today my wife helped me with connecting up the mega tree to controllers. We needed 35 mini extension cords under the tree and she made them all, and continued to wire another dozen elements in the yard. At the end of it all, she showed me how dry it made her fingers and that she has a conflict with stopping with the lighting or going out to buy more lights to add to the show! I heard her talking to her mom about how we have dark spots in the yard and she's gonna have to light those areas ASAP!

I am blessed!!!

Yes you are sir!!

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My wife got everyone together after my knee surgery to help, she is a coordinator without doubt, but some of the basics of plugging in cords from controller to a specific color, escape her....but because of the open house/flip the switch party we have, she supports the hobby, and TRIES to help where she can.

She doesn't advocate me adding any more, but she is just crazy if she thinks I won't!

Here is something you can do to win them over, if they arent already...I had the Demeneted Elf do a shout out to my wonderful wife for all of her support and help...brought a tear to her eye...especially when the first time she hears it is in front of 60 people standing in the street watching and listening...and you hear a big....ahhhhhhhh, come from the crowd! She makes a point of going out each night to listen to that part...

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My wife will barely lift a finger to help unless I beg her to. Even then I hear lots of exasperated sighing when she does whatever trivial assignment I give her. I guess that's part of the reason I am getting a little tired of doing the show. If it weren't for the hundreds of people who would be pissed at me for cancelling the show, I would make this the last year. I still hear about it from people who are angry because I stopped doing such an elaborate Halloween display.

On the other hand my wife is very good about taking credit when somebody approaches us to compliment us on the display. Have to admit I have wanted to speak up several times but knew better.

The one thing that my wife is the best about, is that she never, and I mean never questions how much I am spending to keep the show going. I know that many people would give anything for that luxury.

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My husband is half the show, he's taken over building and quality control, but my Dad is firmly convinced we could do all of this by hooking wires to a speaker lol

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My wifes hobbies are cooking, watching TV, and reading which are sedentary activities. She does not help me at all with the show setup or take down as it is too much work for her she says. She did complain about the cost the first two years but I have since lowered my yearly budget since I have most everything I want now and she does not bring that up anymore. I have asked her opinion a few times on things in the display or my sequencing but she doesn't usually say much about it.

Honostly I would rather have a wife that leaves me be rather than one that harrasses me all the time about my lights so I can't really complain about her non interest in the display. She does tell her friends to check out our website and she has sent the link to a bunch of people at her work. She also has a cookie party every year which doubles as our light show kickoff night and we were up to 67 people attending this year.

She mentioned to me the other day that her and her coworker were looking at the site and they wished the word "Joy" on the roof did more besides change from red, green, or white. I said that I wanted to get into pixels and could put several rows of pixels up there and then could spell any word we wanted and have it change all the time and be any color. She liked the idea and said as long as it is within my budget then I should do that next year.

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and said as long as it is within my budget.

When she said the word "budget", that was the catch right there. Might as well scrap that idea. LOL J/K

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That's awesome! Maybe best post this week.

Well, my wife did in fact go buy several more boxes of lights from Target, and put them in the yard in good spots. But this gets better, she then either made her own zip wire, or carefully recycled labeled zip wire from halloween and came up with a dual labeling system to connect the lights to existing channels on the controllers. When I asked her what she did while I was sequencing, she rattled off controller units and channel numbers in a geographically correct order!!! I just typed them in and they all worked to the sequences first time.

And now she just sent me a baby picture that excited her - our son in his new toy grabbed reading material off of the coffee table and this is a candid photo - no staging!!!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/j_czerwin/8244948749/in/photostream

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Well, my wife did in fact go buy several more boxes of lights from Target, and put them in the yard in good spots. But this gets better, she then either made her own zip wire, or carefully recycled labeled zip wire from halloween and came up with a dual labeling system to connect the lights to existing channels on the controllers. When I asked her what she did while I was sequencing, she rattled off controller units and channel numbers in a geographically correct order!!! I just typed them in and they all worked to the sequences first time.

And now she just sent me a baby picture that excited her - our son in his new toy grabbed reading material off of the coffee table and this is a candid photo - no staging!!!

http://www.flickr.co.../in/photostream

Jay, that is a classic. (refering to the pic) reading LOR books at that age. WOW!!!

Well maybe not reading but still......Very cool!!!

And a good wife you have there as well. Teamwork makes things much easier and fun.

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