Christmastime in Margaritaville

When the lights and decorations started going up in my neighborhood Thanksgiving weekend, my mom gave me nearly hourly updates:
Now there's a Santa.
He's been working all day on those lights.
That star in the window across the street is magnificent.
That guy still isn't done with those lights!
The balcony across the water has lights and a lighted wreath!

So my mother and I wrapped the dead tree in my yard with lights. Hung a wreath on the front door. I set out the very few things that I brought with me from Divorceville.

Perhaps a little half-heartedly, at first.

The plastic pots are kinda half-assed, too. But the trees are real, and my mom loves the figurines.

Especially the girl in the red hat. She's really singing her heart out, my mom says.

I made the snow people some years back.

And the deer, which my mom comments on nearly every night, I found in a second-hand store eons ago. "They're so much bigger than the deer in Iowa!"
        "They're reindeer, Mom."

Margaritaville even has a real tree. Just the right size for showing off my mom's hand-crocheted snowflakes.