How it Started

 

Michael (our son, 9 years old in 2006) was still recovering from Leukemia so he was home bound a good part of the time and one day back in December 2006 Michael was watching the Carson Williams video of Wizards in Winter on youtube.com and he looked up at me smiled and said....."You can do that Dad, can't you?" In a shaky voice I mumbled....yeah, (I was 45) I knew it would take me some time to research and build it. well. that was what I did. I tried to build my own controller which was not so hard of a project I found a website Do It Yourself Christmas and bought a controller kit but I was having trouble spending the time needed to get this project online before Christmas 2007, so I started to search the internet again and I found Light-O-Rama & Wowlights, I purchased most of my equipment from wowlights.com by late 2007 I was ready for my 1st attempt. I was happy with the results so happy with it, I left them on way after New Years and Linda was asking me in early February to put my toys away. and with that I did. And all winter, spring and summer I was thinking on how I was going to make 2008 even better.

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How the Lights Stole Christmas Story

 

I spent all of 2007 assembling controllers and sequencing the music (I never told anybody I was doing this) and in late November 2007 Linda asked me what I needed for the Christmas lights for the season I told her I needed 30-100 strands of mini-white lights, 10-100 bulbs in Red, Blue, Green and 20-100 bulb Multi's and 16-50ft extension cords and...at this time she looked at me like I was nuts and I took her outside and explained what I did and she said, "Oh, great....We're the Griswold's" I reminded her of what Michael asked me last year so I explained in detail how it works and that weekend as I was installing the system Linda was "coming on board" with the concept and gave many suggestions and helped install the system, all this without Michael knowing what we were doing, It was fantastic watching the whole show come together for the first time. I spent many hours after Michael went to bed and sat in my car and watched the lights blink to the music, that's when I knew this was no longer a hobby, its an obsession :)

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Meanwhile, While Building The Display!...… I was testing the lights after Michael went to bed, I would go outside and I would have my laptop sitting on a folding table about 100ft from the house and I would watch the display to see how things "looked" one night about 1am a police car drove by they didn't stop but slowed and kept going, the lights wasn't on because I was fine tuning a sequence, then a few minutes later they came back I was sitting on a chair this time they stopped and pulled right up beside me and I was asked what I was doing, I said well.... do you have a FM radio in your cruiser, they replied yes, I replied tune to 89.5FM and he said....ok now what? I said look at the house. I played Wizards in Winter and the 2 officers watched and looked at each other and said this is amazing, I played a few more songs and afterwards they said how relieved they were that this is what I was doing, I filled in the details on how it was going to be a surprise for our son. I was asked when will this start I said December 1st or 2nd, and before they left one officer said "I am going to bring my family here to watch this", That was the beginning of this "hobby" and I do enjoy making people happy and our son felt the same way he was more concerned about others than himself.

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The Early Surprise

 

We were ready to surprise Michael with our new "Lights" toy, he still had no idea that I built the system. The wife and I took Michael out to dinner and when we got close enough to home to pick up the music on the radio he heard Wizards in Winter and said...."Hey, turn that up"..and while he was jammin' we got in front of the house and he looked up and saw the house jammin' in its own special way, He said..... "You Did it, You Remembered" the look on his face made all the 100's of hours of work worth it. I will never forget the expression on his face.

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The Story Continues...

In June of 2013 Michael was diagnosed with a Grade IV brain tumor, the tumor developed because of a radiation treatment he had in 2004 to stop his Leukemia, I have to admit after all these years of doing a Synchronized Christmas Light Show I was having doubts, but Michael likes what we do, so the show continues.

 

The Worst...

Michael passed away on July 3rd 2014 at 2:15am and I did continue the light show in 2014 and 2015 might be my last year, (as you can read that didn't happen) it's a lot of work and it takes me 5 weekends to set up the display to be ready for Thanksgiving Night, and I am not getting any younger (I was 53 in 2014) and since Michael was our only child my drive to do this light show is dwindling, but this Light Display was Michael's idea and that resonates in my head with every hour I install this light display.

 

As The Years Pass On By...

Here it is January 2nd, 2022 and I just turned off the display for another year (our 15th Christmas Season) I wanted this year to be special and exciting and relive the early days when the display was really busy and fun to watch. I did just that and I video recorded 47 songs I added a YouTube playlist at top of this page. I started this year (2021) thinking it will be my last, and if it is my last I am happy going out on a high note. This website is hosted by Wix and since it is a free site and I did lots of homework looking for a free web host that doesn't delete inactive sites, Wix won!. I know this website is primarily for me (and if you are reading this, thank you) to look back with fondness (except 2014, that was a very hard year for me) I don't expect much web traffic but, as I said, I did this site primarily for me for when I get to old (I'm 60 in 2021) and I want to reminisce. I will have this website as an archive with videos and memories :)

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Chapter 2022: Here it is Summer of 2022, and yes I want to do a display, By the time I start to install the display I will be 61 years old, right now (June 24th 2022) I fell well enough to make it happen once again...time will tell :) 

UPDATE: It's Halloween and I decided not to do a light display this Christmas Season, This is the first time since 2007 I ever missed "The Lights", sorry

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Chapter 2023:  November 4th, 2023, I started to install the display, because for the first time in my life I got poison ivy, I was prescribed Prednisone (steroid) and that gave me some energy, I got the 12 Pixel Matrix installed and tested :) not bad, usually that takes a weekend...I'm chugging away for a guy of 62, weather was warm high near 60°f

 

Epilogue:

I want to thank everyone since we started in 2007 that made our light display part of their Christmas Season. 

A little FYI... I didn't find man's religion when my son got sick, I found God when I was 16 years old, nothing makes any sense to me if you take the Creator out of the equation of life. I am a self-taught Christian I really don't follow any church that's run by the greed of man, I follow the Christ and no not on Twitter, Please keep "The Christ" in your Christmas, All Jesus preached was to treat others the way you want to be treated and respect the Creator. All I'm asking is to Trust Jesus, even if you don't believe talk to God for 7 days and talk like you would to your father, tell him about your day, he would love to hear from you, and see if your world doesn't change.

-Paul Carroll (1-12-22)