Our back yard has become the BBQ’s home…and on one occasion, my son played T-ball back there. Luckily, there is a huge park right behind us.

It’s definitely the time of year in the Valley to do something. A few folks on the block have done major patio expansions (designed to eventually be an extension to the house). One or two have actually done some landscaping (concrete, wood chips, grass, and some patio furniture). Almost the entire block has gone nuts with the Christmas Decorations (the front yards on these new houses came pre-landscaped). We’re lucky to have gotten our tree up last week…. We finally have furniture in nearly every room (guest bedroom is really sparse, but it doubles a Lego command central for my son).

I’d like to get a reef covered with lights to put in the windows above the front door…. but that would look minuscule compared to the theme park style lights in the houses around us. One even has a train, a nutcracker, and a bunch of animatronic stuff going on. We’re so lame.

We came back from a weekend away and my son started asking us about who was baby Jesus, Mary, and the three kings….having lived in Australia for most of his life, where Christmas was a day at the beach and a cold prawn buffet, the traditional Christian Christmas values were foreign to him until now (took him a couple of years to let anything other than gifts, Santa, the Polar Express, and big meals sink in as the meaning of Christmas).

I fear that if we don’t get grass in the backyard soon, it will be another year before anything gets done….but getting grass means putting in the irrigation system, etc. Once April/May rolls around, it’s hard to get much done in the desert heat.

I’ve got to get crackin on this one.