"Oh!" Sydney exclaimed, just as we were driving up to our house. "Oh! Did you see that? Oh! Did you put those up?"
At first, I wasn't sure what she was talking about, but then I followed her eye and realized what she was looking at.
"Are you looking at the lights on the tree?" I guessed what she was so excited about. Before I had even finished my words, she had jumped out of the car and walked over to a bush in our driveway.
"Are those...did you...oh, it's so pretty!"
"Did you put those Christmas lights up?" she asked.
"Not me," I confessed.
And then she figured it out. They weren't real Christmas lights twinkling on the bush. Or, at least, they weren't electric Christmas lights.
"It's so beautiful," she sighed, and then shook some of the lights off the branches into her hand where they puddled in a less than spectacular fashion.
"Yes," I agreed. "It's very beautiful."
More than once now since that first day of discovery several days ago, Sydney has learned that if the light is just right, and the rain has paused to catch its breath, then the bush will again be all decked out in sparkly lights. "Look, Mom," she'll say. And she and I will trade a smile, both of us captivated by Nature's Christmas lights twinkling on a cold December day.
