Turkey et al

Their appears to be a fondness in our neighborhood for frightfully tacky lawn decorations, and Riley has become a big fan. A favorite was the turkey a few blocks down the street.

For Halloween, this same house also had an inflatable haunted house, and for Christmas, they now have a snowman, a Christmas tree, and (on a balcony overlooking the yard) Santa himself. (These are the type that’s made out of light parachute-type material and have a little electric motor and light going constantly to stay inflated and beautiful. Like Jake’s fat suit, but way less cool.)

Just around the corner is another house with another Christmas tree (of the fake-but-real-looking variety), a reindeer (wire mesh with lots of white lights), and a scary (just ask Riley) paper-mache-type snowman covered with multicolor LEDs that slowly shift colors (like something you’d find in the magic mushroom infested section of Splash Mountain at Disneyland). Riley has largely conquered her fears, however, in a multistage process that starts with making Daddy touch it and ends a few days later when she goes up and touches it herself.

Someone on the next block just put up these (moving!) reindeer and a snowman:

I suppose it looks better at night (well, the reindeer at least). What else is a conscientious LA homeowner to do come snowman season? A few houses down someone actually filled their front yard with real snow, but that only lasted about a day. At this point it’s just as well that Riley doesn’t realize that real snowmen are made out of snow, but that is a situation we’ll have to be sure to rectify before her childhood memories are permanently warped.

(While we’re on the subject of frightening Christmas decorations, here’s a picture of the tree in the Office of Building where the shiny new New Dream office is:

Not to worry, the view helps blot the image from your mind.)