Merry and bright

MOSES LAKE — Now that the Halloween and Thanksgiving holidays are over, it’s time to prepare for the big one. For a lot of us, Christmas decorating means setting up the tree, dusting off the Nativity scene and maybe hanging some twinkling lights around the front window. But some folks like to take decorating to a whole different level, with lights upon lights upon lights and inflatable figures of every variety that can turn a neighborhood into a winter wonderland. For those who go full Griswold, there’s a lot of work that goes into it.

“It's taken probably two and a half to three weeks this year to get everything up,” said Alan Coulter, whose holiday displays are considered legendary in Moses Lake. “When we moved here in the Montlake neighborhood about 20 years ago, we only had a couple of inflatables. This year, we have 75 inflatables, we’ve got 30 walk-through illuminated arches, three-quarters of a mile of extension cords laying out there and close to 15,000 lights. So yeah, it's grown.”

Alan Coulter and his wife Cheryl have their yard filled with inflatable Santas, snowmen and cartoon characters. Kitty-corner from their house, their neighbor James Hash has a slightly more modest display, mostly favoring the Star Wars and Peanuts characters he enjoys.

“We started a few weeks early this year. The Coulters started ahead of me, so I'm about a week behind,” said Hash. “I just have to get out there when the weather's good. On all those nice days we put up as many as we can and then just hope it's okay. We've been pretty lucky this year with the wind. I think we've had one day of bad wind and everything stayed fine.”

His decorations aren’t part of any kind of competition with the Coulters, Hash explained. He said he had a few inflatables when he and his wife moved to the neighborhood. When he learned they had moved across the street from people who went all-out, the enthusiasm was infectious.

“I have a few lights,” he said. “I have plans and dreams to do more lights. I just have to get my side yard ready so that I can expand over there and then do lights at the same time.”

Most of the work actually takes place almost a year ahead of time, right after the holidays are over.

“It's planning and preparation,” Coulter said. “We store the majority of our stuff in 50-gallon drums, and before we put everything away after the season, we’ve got to dry everything out. So we bring everything in the house, all the inflatables. Everything that's wet, we have to bring it in and start it back up and let it sit in the house or in the garage and run and let it dry out. Because if we put it away wet, it's gonna mold; the material is gonna rot. We’ve got to make sure all the light bulbs are changed that are burned out, and we put it to bed. (That way) we don't have to mess with it when we get ready to put everything back together for the next year.”

That’s not a short process either, he added.

“I'd say normally it's about a week and a half,” he said. “We got a little bit more room to be able to dry things out this year, so it’s going a little quicker for us this year. Then probably another two days prep on the yard and getting it back into some sort of shape.”

One thing to be aware of is the amount of power the displays use. Electric lights and inflatable motors can put a lot of strain on a house’s electrical system, and that’s not something to take lightly.

“We can’t run the microwave,” Coulter joked, before turning a little more serious. “One of the most time-consuming, monotonous, tedious things we have to do is, all the outlets outside and everything that is plugged in out there, we cover it all with plastic so things don't get wet. Because we've had that issue in the past where things start tripping out on us because connections are getting wet.”

“We had to install some more electrical outlets outdoors in previous years because we, quite frankly, ran out of places to plug things in,” he continued. “My wife kind of handles that whole thing, because she can just look at it and figure out what extension cords need to go where and that kind of thing.”

“This house was remodeled not long ago,” Hash said. “So it doesn't strain my system at all. You know, my hairdryer can be used and nothing pops.”

Inflatables have to be staked into the ground, which brings up another thing to be careful of: underground sprinklers.

“We use rebar for our arches and we slip PVC pipe over the rebar,” Coulter said. “And we've had one instance where I've driven a piece of rebar into the ground and punctured the sprinkler pipe and had to repair that in the spring.”

Of course, the weather doesn’t always cooperate, like in this year’s ice storm a couple of days before Thanksgiving. When that happens, the best thing to do is just shut everything off and let it stay on the ground until things improve.

“Everything’s on timers,” Coulter said. “I just unplugged everything, because it was pretty nasty. The timers have the display going from 3:30 to 10 Monday through Friday, and then 10 to 10 on weekends. They just automatically turn on. Then we just kind of go out and babysit them a little bit. Sometimes the inflatables get hung up on lights and things like that. So we just go out and untangle things. When we get wind they get thrown around a little bit and they won't blow up like they should.”

“They're staked down pretty well so that we don't worry about it too much,” Hash said. And we watch each other's yards. (Alan has) the flag up there so as soon as that flag starts going, I text him that the wind’s starting to move and we get them down as soon as it gets too windy.”

The Coulters use their display to collect donations for the Boys and Girls Club, fittingly for a display oriented toward the young – and young at heart.

“At Christmas we target everything towards the little ones, to bring them the most joy and happiness and see their eyes light up. And that's what we do,” Coulter said.

Joel Martin can be reached via email at jmartin@columbiabasinherald.com.

Want to check it out?

The Coulter Family holiday display can be seen 3:30 p.m.-10 p.m. weekdays and 10 a.m.-10 p.m. on weekends at 2069 S. Crestmont Drive in Moses Lake. James Hash’s display is kitty-corner from theirs at 2104 S. Crestmont Drive.