Christmas

I'm on Penicillin because the doctor thought I might have Strep.  Is it normal that my doctor's office doesn't do cultures anymore? If they think you have it you get antibiotics.  Or they think you have heartburn, which is what they told Gabe when he went in for a sore throat a few weeks back.  The doctor tried to tell me that maybe I had heartburn, which was causing the sore throat but I told her I know heartburn, because I had just had it for 9 months while I was pregnant. Simply breathing while I was pregnant would give me heartburn. (Luckily,  I was prepared for the heartburn diagnosis because of G's experience. Makes you wonder if they just saw the pharmaceutical rep who had heartburn medicine samples so it was fresh in their brain?  Maybe the heartburn people have good pens or something.)

Anyway, on my way to my appointment, I saw a car with antlers attached to the hood.  I was at a stop light and right beside the car, and I only had my iPhone, so my picture doesn't quite do it justice but you kind of get the idea.   The antlers seem to be replacing the wreaths from years past.  Wreaths are so out this year-it's all about antlers.  

Yeah!  Antlers on an Eclipse!

And last night, driving home with Gabe and Ollie, I couldn't get over all of the inflatable Christmas decorations.  

Now that I'm looking closely at this, is this a South Park Santa?  It kinda looks like it...

The problem with the inflatable Christmas decorations, besides the fact that they just look cheesy, is that they are deflated during the day and so all you see is, for example, in the photo above, is a flat Santa.  So depressing.  

What I really love though are the houses that have the odd collection of Christmas decorations.  Take for example the house pictured below.  (Again, this is an iPhone photo and it's broad daylight so you don't really get the full effect but you can still get an idea of what I'm talking about.)

We have a few candy canes, a nutcracker, a few Christmas trees, an ice skating polar bear and Mary and Joseph with the Baby Jesus.  

Here's a creepy one.  This house had only this in the window:

Scary!

There are also the people who really like to go big. Gone are the days of a simple strand of lights.  

If you look closely, you can see Santa climbing into the chimney.  And several nutcrackers supervising the yard.  There are also some candles up by the windows, presumably to illuminate the Christmas tree.  And of they even have the animatronic Christmas deer, which really, are so three years ago.

These people have a lot of lights, but at least there's some consistency here.  You have to appreciate that.