Limo and Lights

This past Thursday night, Brian and I had the treat to join a group of friends to celebrate the Christmas season in style. Emily Robards and her boyfriend Jay Minner both have December birthdays, so in celebration, rented a limo and we drove to see some Christmas lights. We actually did this same thing 3 years ago for Emily's birthday and went to Lake Lanier's Magical Night of Lights. It was so much fun so when we got invited to do a semi-repeat this year we both jumped at the chance. We meet at Emily's precious townhouse for some delicious appetizers and adult beverages. Tacky sweaters were welcomed.




Once our bellies were full, the limo arrived and we loaded up. Our driver Eric was a hoot. Our first stop of the night was in Kennesaw to the Meckley Family's house. John Meckley spends hours upon hours each year to layout thousands of lights in your yard and on his house, then programs them the turn off and on to coordinate with the music. You turn your car radio to 88.3 to hear the music, but he also has speakers in his yard too. It was very impressive. We were in front of this family's house looking around and taking pictures, and John came out and talked to us. He said it takes him 10 hours per 1 minute of music to get everything in sync. Wow!

Check out some of these stats I found on his website:

Individual light bulbs used: approximately 30,000
Length of extension cords used: approximately 1 mile
Control system used: Light-o-Rama
# of controllers: 15
# of individually lighted elements: 240 (16 per controller)
Time taken to program lights to music: 8-10 hours for each MINUTE of music
Total time to program 2008 show: approximately 400 hours




When we asked him why he would dedicate so much of his time to this, he says that he just really enjoys it and his kids love it and start asking about it around Halloween every year. From start to finish the show takes close to 40 minutes.

After a few songs and several pictures here we left to then go to Lights of Life @ Life University. We were running a little behind schedule and arrive right at 10:00 when they were wrapping things up, and turning off the lights. We got to see most of it but some places had already been shut down for the night.



Emily was a tish disappointed.



It was such a fun evening seeing friends, some of which we had not seen in over a year, and made some new friends in the process too. Thanks Emily and Jay for inviting us to join in on this wonderful evening. Happy late Birthday to Jay and Happy early Birthday to Emily.