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Holiday Neighbors 2

Last time, I mentioned that the neighbors seem to have engaged in some sort of a decoration-off for the holidays. Well, they're still at it, folks. I can't actually take pictures of the whole thing because at least one set of neighbors seems to always keep their door open, so they would see me taking pictures of the set up. I figure that'd be an awkward conversation that I don't want to have. So, I'll just have to describe it all to you. I figure I can manage that.

To begin with, let me paint the picture with all of the relevant detail. We live in a complex where the apartments are clustered into groups of four, so we have three immediate neighbors. There are a whole lot more neighbors in the vicinity, but they're not the folks we see day in and day out. And of these three neighbors, two have been there since we've moved in. So, we saw what their apartments looked like last year, and we have that point of reference to compare against.

Last year, the neighbors had some decorations up, but not nearly as many. One of the neighbors had some decorative stakes in the ground (sort of like this) and perhaps some lights, but it was pretty modest. This year, on the other hand, is a whole other level. All of the neighbors have some sort of externally visible decorations. That includes us, for the record: we put up the same holiday wreath that we up last year.

The biggest change, though comes from the two neighbors facing each other. One of these neighbors is a new family to the "block," and they put in some of those candy cane stakes and a giant snowman sticker-like thing on their front door. I think that there are some lights on or near their windows, too (I didn't look THAT closely). Either way, there's absolutely no mistaking that they're in the holiday spirit.

Well, in a case of keeping up with the Joneses, the neighbors that face this household put up the very same candy cane stakes, some Christmas lights, a disco globe-like set of lights, and an inflatable snowman. They made sure to one-up the lights with the disco globe thing, and then they went and got a better, 3-D snowman. Remember, they didn't put one of these things up last year. Also, they just so happened to put up their snowman after the neighbors facing them put up their snowman-on-the-door. Yup, they intentionally tried to one-up their neighbors.

At that point, the last household in our little cluster made sure to put up a wreath, too, so that they could get in on the act. It was almost like they got peer pressured into it. I chuckled when I saw the wreath on their door.

Even better, we're still not mid-way through December yet. I fully expect that there will be more decorations added to the mix before the actual Christmas day. I'm sort of curious what it's all going to look like, but I'm positive that I will be laughing about it for the whole month.

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