What surprised you today?...

...how few Peanuts/Charlie Brown Christmas decorations people in Chicagoland have...only 3 in 100 miles of suburbs.

Back Story: Last Saturday, after spending some time with Megan, Tim, Barrett and new bundle-of-joy Audrey, I met up with my friend Cindy in Lombard to drive around and look at Christmas displays. She had quite the journey planned out based on google searches, a Christmas lights app and word of mouth. I thought we were just planning to look at lights in general, but about an hour into our adventure when we finally saw our first Peanuts inflatable, I realized that Cindy and I didn't have the same goals in mind! How could I have thought we would be looking for anything else (a nativity scene, maybe)? Her friends lovingly refer to her as a Peanuts hoarder - she has Peanuts decorations for every ocassion (including 6 nativity scenes with Woodstock as baby Jesus) and every birthday and Christmas card I ever get from her has Charlie Brown or Snoopy on it.

The first house we saw (in Lombard) was a good one: they had programmed their lights to the beat of Christmas songs that you could pipe through your car radio. From there, we drove north, past a house with a plastic Santa army (a little creepy if you ask me, especially at night). Then, we drove 20 miles to Juniper Lane in South Elgin. Pretty much all of the houses on that street went all out with their displays and we found TWO Peanuts decorations. However, one of them wasn't lit, so it didn't count. After that, we drove another 20 miles through South Barrington and Barrington to North Barrington (pretty, but no Peanuts).

We decided to forego the read-about home in Gurnee (which would have been another 20 miles) and turned south to make our way back to Lombard via Arlington Heights. By that time, we'd been in the car for almost 4 hours and hadn't seen any Peanuts decorations in 3 hours. Alas, as we were driving down Arlington Heights Road, I thought I spotted a Charlie Brown decoration (but thought it could have also been a snowman). We turned into that neighborhood and made it our mission not to leave that neighborhood until we saw something Peanuts-y! We drove around that neighborhood for about 30 minutes before finally going back to the place where I thought I saw a Charlie Brown. Sure enough, I could have gotten to bed a little earlier that night if we'd just gone straight to that one house! And would you believe that on that same street, we saw another Charlie Brown decoration!

So, now I'm constantly on the lookout for Peanuts Christmas decorations everywhere. Imagine how excited I was when I got to work on Monday and my coworker was wearing a Peanuts Christmas tie! Then, I was doubly excited when I spotted a big Snoopy from the Edens expressway near Touhy. Needless to say, Cindy and I will trek up there this Saturday after we see A Christmas Story, The Musical!