Just because the movie is called 101 Dalmations doesn't mean you actually need that many in your yard

Christmas lights are one of my favorite Christmas traditions. As a young lady, I often dragged my mother out to ride around looking at them. I seem to recall sticking the dog in the backseat every year too. Please ignore my mother when she tries to tell you we followed a bus going on a lights tour one year because riding the bus would have meant leaving the dog at home. What kind of idiot would do that? The woman is full of lies I tell you. Lies.

I subject my husband to the Christmas lights tour these days. He's a pretty good sport about it as long as we hit a Krispy Kreme drive through at some point. And as long as I don't try to convince him to go to exceptionally crowded neighborhoods on Christmas Eve. I once did that. The highlight of our evening was the Burger King drive thru after we made a u-turn.

This year we actually saw lights though. Our favorite display was Santa kneeling next to a manger. I'm not even sure what that means. I guess they want to be sure we know they're religious but that they still appreciate Santa. So Santa's praying to the baby Jesus. If my husband didn't have such a lead foot, I might have gotten the camera up in time to document it.

Some houses were hard to miss though. For example, I guess these people really like the movie 101 Dalmations:

I'm not saying it's not a good movie. I'm just saying it's a lot of dogs and the movie's getting kind of old. But I respect their enthusiasm. And I wish they lived next door to me. Although not nearly as much as I wish these people lived next to me:

On top of all the inflated crap in their yard, they've staged a mass lynching in their tree:

You just know that tree display is legendary in the neighborhood. I imagine it started several years ago with one stupid windsock. Then everyone they knew started giving them old crap they didn't want anymore to add to the collection and now it's just all kinds of out of hand. There's so much going on in the tree you almost don't notice the Department Store-esque window display of stuffed animals. They forgot to post a sign to tell us how many of them came free attached to a box of Russell Stover candies but I still love them.