Category Archives: Forever Home

New home, nice home, Forever home. However bad 2025 might SUCK, and believe me, we don’t have to look far to see evidence of that, this will be the year that we got our Forever Home.

Our old Christmas tree was probably 20+ years old. It was a bit ratty, and most/all of the built in lights were shot. It’s now part of the outdoor decorations in the front yard and makes a wonderful substrate for a couple of strings of lights. But for the new home with the tall ceilings and the gorgous Great Room and kitchn, we needed something bigger and newer.

There are eight or nine different modes for the built-in lights here, both colored and white, twinkling & steady, switching back and forth, very complex. For now we’ve settled on the steady white lights for this first “layer.” We’ll add strings of colored lights over the top, then ornaments of all kinds (we have a “garbage” tree design), then decorate the rest of the room and the interior.

In addition, the rest of the outdoor lights have arrived and I think I’ve hit (barely!) all of the super critical deadlines at work, so I’ll be able to take some time to get the rest of the outdoor lights up.

The Long-Suffering Wife noticed an announcement on the FaceBook page for the local town we’ve moved to about an event at the Civic Center park with Santa, music, food, and the town Christmas tree lighting. We’re trying to be proactive about getting out and getting active in the town that we’ve chosen as our Forever Home, so off we went.

IT WAS LOVELY!!

Booths with lots of crafts and toys. Tons of people with their dogs, including an incredibly sweet and patient Great Dane. Free cookies & hot chocolate. Other food trucks, everything from pizza, crepes, Mexican food, coffee, and ice cream. Dozens and dozens of inflatable figures and a gazillion lights on the trees all through the park.

We had a wonderful sunset, then the place really lit up. The park itself (first time we’ve been over to the Library and Civic Center area) is great, plenty of benches and room to roam, fountains, and so on. We heard that during the summer there are Friday night concerts there – something to watch out for in 2026 and beyond! Plenty of parking. All in all an extremely pleasant place. We picked a good place to live!

The fountains were off but still had water in them, so there were reflections to be seen. The stage had music from a local band as well as the bands and choral groups from at least two of the local high schools. There was a dance group made up of grade school and middle school students. Santa and Mrs. Claus came in via the local LifeFlight helicopter and were scheduled for a couple hours of taking pictures with kids.

My goofy “Dr Seuss” style sproingy Christmas hat was a big hit, I got many compliments.

We didn’t stay for the tree lighting since we were getting hungry, but you can bet we’ll keep an eye open for other community events such as parades, concerts, or other holiday celebrations.

Not a lot of new lights up, mainly because they’re all “in transit” from where I ordered them online and the deliveries keep getting delayed. I tried to see if Lowe’s had anything still, and they’ve been picked pretty clean. My bad for not being prepared, I guess.

However, the wreathes came in, and like with our Pomelo house (from 7+ years ago) we again have two gorgeous wooden front door, each with a huge, all natural wreath from the Vermont Country Store.

I love the look! But what’s that hiding in the one on the right?

Sorry, I can’t help myself.

Day One of the efforts to decorate the Forever Home in Hesperia. I am not dissatisfied with the progress and results, but I have learned new truths.

Part of the “adventure” is figuring out where our existing light sets will go best on the new house. For starters, along the roof line we typically have dual lines of big, colorful C9 bulbs, along with white icicle lights. We started at the garage (southwest) corner of the house and from there worked both ways.

The good news is that we found a relatively quick and simple way to hang the lights and anchor them, and there are working power outlets up under the eaves on both ends of the house, as well as near the front door.

The bad news is that this house is HUGE and has a massive front roof line. There are gaps, and we’re going to neeed to make a trip to Lowe’s ASAP to get more lights.

Once we get the roof line done, then we can start to fill in with colored lights in the bushes along the driveway and the trees in the front yard.

At one point in the house hunting over the past couple of years I think I mentioned that a non-critical but also non-trivial consideration in looking a potential new houses was, “Are there lots of places where I can hang Christmas lights?” Some potential houses might have been on streets with more traffic, and at least one had even bigger roof lines and opportunities for hanging more lights, but this place is going to be pretty magnificent I think.

Updates to follow…