Silliness around the bend

I think we have finally gone around the bend. As in getting a bit crazier and goofy as we get older. We have a print in our bedroom that is one of the She Said series by Leigh (sorry I wasn't able to find better attribution even on the Web).

It says:

"There is a direct correlation between the level of happiness in one's life and the amount of silliness they allow into it." SHE SAID "I know. I've done studies."

Last weekend Johnnie was telling me about an inflatable turkey that's on his school bus run and how cute it was. We took a drive past the people's house (literally a mansion on a street with million dollar homes - even here where housing prices are traditionally lower than in other parts of the country) and Johnnie went to the door and asked the woman who answered the door where she got the turkey. Online, couldn't remember where.

We embarked on a turkey hunt online and in local stores (Home Depot, Lowe's, Target, Big Lots, WallyWorld, you name it). He found the turkey on one site online (this was a very special inflated turkey, after all) and ordered it only to be notified on Monday that it was out of stock. Bummer. So he found a different, more common turkey on another site and ordered that. When I told Erin what we were getting, she merely said "your neighbors are gonna plotz." Possibly. Who cares? It arrived last night. Johnnie went out and immediately set it up. The turkey's name is Gobble. Johnnie is thrilled. Erin and the granddaughters arrived while he was outside setting Gobble up and the Emily thought Gobble was pretty great (Lucy's too young to verbalize her delight quite yet). Erin? not so much but she humors us. After all, we're old (relatively speaking) and she doesn't want to be written out of the wills!

Please know that we have not been inflatable ANYTHING people in the past. Our holiday decorations run to a few strands of Santa Claus lights around the front door, a grapevine star over the front door and a couple grapevine trees standing sentry on the porch. Quick and done.

(I asked for a small light up gnome for the back deck and a pink flamingo to stick in the flower bed a couple years ago and I seriously thought Erin was going to disown me for achieving a new level of tackiness and kitsch that she did not think I was capable of. It's a recently acquired fondness, possibly associated with getting older or maybe just more relaxed with being me. They're cute.)

During the day yesterday, Johnnie went to a Thanksgiving celebration at granddaughter Emily's preschool. He stopped at Lowe's on the way back to look at tools he might want for Christmas (to help those of us who play Santa for him) and he was smitten with yet another inflatable that he decided we needed. An inflatable nativity scene. Dear Lord, as Erin said when she saw the box last night.


The nativity is cute and will go up right after Thanksgiving when Gobble comes down. He (Gobble) is having a short season this year since Thanksgiving is next week but I'm sure he'll get a much longer season next year.

As you might suspect by now, we personify our decorations somewhat. We have the Great Pumpkin who starts coming upstairs in September because he's excited about Halloween. We have a small stuffed Santa Claus who has been known to sneak up the stairs early in November (for heaven's sake) to get an early start on the Christmas season. And they all rebel when they're sent back to the basement when their respective season is completed. I'm fearful that Gobble will be the same way. We are pretty sure they talk and compare notes during the remainder of the year while they're downstairs waiting for their season to arrive.

So we have achieved another benchmark in our silliness. Inflatables. Yikes.