We knew when we moved in to our neighborhood that it was cute and full of character.  That was a large part of the reason we chose to spend a little more money and live in Brookside rather than out in the burbs. (Add the shorter commute for me and shops and restaurants in walking distance and you’ve got the top three list). What we didn’t realize was that our neighborhood was a tourist attraction – especially at Christmas. I was recently trolling through the TripAdvisor entry for Kansas City only to see my neighborhood listed as attraction number 33 out of 82?  Huh?  How can a neighborhood be an attraction? (Disclaimer:  while I believe that my street officially falls within the borders of Brookside – it’s north of Gregory – we are much closer to Waldo which is a funkier, not quite so quaint neighborhood.  Waldo is not listed on TripAdvisor but it’s where we seem to spend most of our time.   I guess the tattoo parlors and thrift stores aren’t everyone’s cup of tea.)

We’ve had some lovely evenings lately walking around our neighborhood looking at the Christmas lights.  I may have mentioned that when the fountains go off, the lights go on a and that’s not just at Crown Center and the Plaza.    My whole neighborhood is decked out in lights. There are strings of red and white across tree limbs and coming down from the sky.  There are extension cords everywhere. Some of the impossibly cute houses have lights all along their impossibly steep roof lines.  So not wanting to be odd man out, yesterday we decided we would try to hang lights on our cute house as well. (If this were a reality show, there would be ominous music, a voice over and then we’d cut to commercial to increase the suspense.) Anyone who knows Frank and his love of heights will know what is coming next.  Even with the neighbor’s 30 foot ladder, we weren’t getting anywhere near the peak on the front of the house.  He tried climbing through the bathroom window and scaling the roof but the pitch is impossible so that approach wasn’t going to work either. (We did get the gutters cleaned while he was up there though.) So we conceded defeat.  We wandered around the neighborhood again last night to get some ideas on what else we might do to deck out the house.

And that’s when we really noticed the traffic!  In the 30 minutes or so of our walk, I counted no fewer than 6 limos and 3 tour buses (one a luxury long distance coach!) prowling through our neighborhood not to mention the dozens upon dozens of cars inching along gawking at the displays. The weather was mild so windows were down and we could hear the squeals of delight from little kids in the back seats of several cars.  There was one antique convertible with the top down , a large family crammed into the seats, merrily singing Christmas carols off key. Apparently, Christmas light tours are a big thing here in KC and our neighborhood is a prime stop. (Full disclosure:  our street is somewhat of a disappointment to the tourists I think.  I’m trying to decide if that makes me sad.)

So today we were determined to try again.

Instead of hanging lights from the peak of the roof, we decided that the upstairs bedroom window made more sense.  Add a few nets on the big bush out front and a string of lights along the back porch and I feel like we fit in a little better.  I also found out that there are professional services you can hire to come hang your Christmas lights (I was told it was a lucrative side line for local fire stations!) so I don’t feel quite so bad.  We were suspicious of how neatly the strings of lights matched up with the random roof lines – no draping strings of extra bulbs or trailing lights between gables.  I feel a bit vindicated and just a little proud of the minor effect we were able to create ourselves.

Now next year…..