January 3, 2004
Tonight was the last night for the lights.  The timers have been unplugged and the lights are already getting packed away.  Tomorrow will probably be the big tear down day.  The display was absolutely awesome, but not as good as it will be for Christmas 2004.  After all of my boxing day shopping, I ended up with a total of 7,724 new lights.  Also, I am planning on having computer controlled lights next year.  They will be controlled by software and hardware from a company called Light-O-Rama.  To learn more check there website at www.lightorama.com .

February 26, 2004
Well, things are going well.  I am still buying lights, because one of our stores here still has them out at 60% off.  There will be many new things for the 2004 lighting season.  I have made 3 ropelight presents with pvc pipe.  I made another car for my ropelight train and I have bought many more ropelight figures.  I have got 16 channels of Light-O-Rama for my computer controlled light display.  Now I need to buy my X10 modules and I still plan on getting more Light-O-Rama channels.  It is going to be a great year.  I hope to break 30,000 lights this year!

April 20, 2004
I have still been buying more things for the display this year.  I got 4 speakers for outside last week so that I can play the music outside.  I ordered my X10 timer modules and they are supposed to be in next week.  They will be the best timers for turning all of the lights on/off at the same time.  I ordered some strobe lights for the display this year.  I have now got 15 strobe lights for the display.  Planning is going well and at this point everything is going together nicely.  The work on the computer for the computer controlled lights has been a slow, tedious task but I enjoy every minute of it.  I am still planning on ordering about 24 more LOR channels, but I am waiting for some of the new stuff to come out in mid May to early June.  Then I can place my order.

October 24, 2004
It has been 6 months!!! since the last post.  There has been a lot happening in the last months.  I have got nearly all the stuff for this years display including thousands of new lights, all my timers, although I need to pick up a few more, and lots more.  I will have the majority of the display running by a computer this year.  There will be 40 computer controlled channels that will be making the lights flash to music and lots of other neat stuff.  It will be a great year.  30,000+ lights.

November 1, 2004
The Halloween display was taken down and packed away today.  I also finished putting up the icicle lights and I got the angel on the roof.  I have about 4,000 lights up so far.  That's only 13% of 30,000!  Now comes the more difficult and much more time consuming things that I have to put up.  Oh well, I love doing it.

November 14, 2004
Well, about 12,000 lights have been put up so far.  Today I got the mini trees put out as well as one of the 8 foot trees.  I got all the lights done on the pine tree-1650 of them.  I wanted to get the 19 foot tall mega tree up today, but I need 400 lights for it still and no place in town has green lights.  I am running into a problem because all of the stores have every color except for green.  I also bought another 8' inflatable.  This time I got a Santa.  That's all for now.  This week I will be going hard trying to get as much put up as possible.

November 24, 2004
There are about 26,000 lights up at this point.  Everything is looking good and is right on schedule.  It is 11:19 PM and I just got in from putting up lights.  Attempt #1 failed at installing the 18' tree, but it has been reworked and will be installed tomorrow night.  Once that is up, then the display is pretty well done.  Then my whole weekend will be spent running wires and connecting all of the controllers.  Also the speakers/speaker wire will be run and the network cable will be run from the computer.  I have steadily been buying more LED lights to put up because they use so little power and they look great.  Look out on boxing day because I will be buying all the LED's in sight.  Right now I am up to 34 blue strings, 3 white, 16 green, 6 red--or something like that.  I replaced the large C9 lights that were outlining the roof last year with the large style of LED's.  The bulbs are close to the same size, use way less power and look better/brighter.  One regular C9 bulb uses the same power as 3.5 strings of LED's.  C9=7watts versus 2 watts for a string of LED's.  That is a huge difference. 

November 26, 2004
The display is almost complete.  The 18' tree was put up last night and contains 2500 lights.  Although it took five people to put it up, it looks great and will be an excellent addition to the display this year.  I am right now in the process of putting out the last few strands of lights.  Then my weekend will be spent wiring everything together and connecting everything to the computer.  The display will be ready for the December 1st @ 6pm light up.  I also bought more LED lights.  4 more blue, 2 yellow, 1 more white.

November 28, 2004
The display is complete!!!  Everything is hooked up and ready to go.  The only thing now is that I have to put out the two inflatables, but I will do that on Decmber 1st right before the display lights up.  I spent all day yesterday and today wiring everything and running cables.  I have all the LOR computer controllers connected.  As well, I have the speakers outside ready to play the music.  The display this year has been a huge undertaking, but once it is lit up it will be well worth it.  I will be running some tests outside with the controllers later tonight at about 11:30pm when no one will see the lights on.  The first time that I will see all lights on at the same time will be December 1st @ 6pm.  I have to still add up the number of lights and cords, but I will soon have the total listed here.  There will be pitctures probably within the next two weeks.  That's it for now...now to start planning for next year!