Michael (our son, 9 years old in 2006) was still recovering from Leukemia so he was home bound a good part of the time and one day back in December 2006 Michael was watching the Carson Williams video of Wizards in Winter on youtube.com and he looked up at me smiled and said....."You can do that Dad, can't you?" I replied......yeah.....but I knew it would take me some time (almost a year) to resea
rch and build it. I tried to build my own light controllers which was not so hard of a project I found a website Do It Yourself Christmas and bought a controller kit but I was having trouble spending the time needed to get this project online before Christmas 2007, so I started to search the internet again and I found Light-O-Rama & Wowlights, I purchased most of my equipment from wowlights.com by late 2007 I was ready for my 1st attempt. I was happy with the results so happy with it, I left them on way after New Years and Linda (wife) was asking me in early February to put my toys away. And all winter, spring and summer I was thinking on how I was going to make 2008 even better. How the Lights Stole Christmas Story:
I spent all of 2007 assembling controllers and sequencing the music (I never told anybody I was doing this) and in late November 2007 Linda asked me what I needed for the Christmas lights for the season I told her I needed 30-100 strands of mini-white lights, 10-100 bulbs in Red, Blue, Green and 20-100 bulb Multi's and 16-50ft extension cords and...at this time she looked at me like I was nuts and I took her outside and explained what I did and she said, "Oh, great....We're the Griswold's" I reminded her of what Michael asked me last year so I explained in detail how it works and that weekend as I was installing the system Linda was "coming on board" with the concept and gave many suggestions and helped install the system, all this without Michael knowing what we were doing, It was fantastic watching the whole show come together for the first time. I spent many hours after Michael went to bed and sat in my car and watched the lights blink to the music, that's when I knew this was no longer a hobby, its an obsession :)
The Early Surprise:
We were ready to surprise Michael with our new "Lights" toy, he still had no idea that I built the system. The wife and I took Michael out to dinner and when we got close enough to home to pick up the music on the radio he heard Wizards in Winter and said...."Hey, turn that up"..and while he was jammin' we got in front of the house and he looked up and saw the house jammin' in its own special way, He said..... "You Did it, You Remembered" the look on his face made all the 100's of hours of work worth it. Michael's Story and Legecy:
Michael, who passed away on July 3rd, 2014 at 2:15am due to complications from his Stage IV brain tumor, Michael fought a courageous battle (he was 17) It was his idea for me to do the Light Show back in 2007, so I will continue in his memory, as painful as it will be for me to do so, The Lights Stay ON.......
Michael wanted to give back to the children who was going through the same painful treatments that he was, so Michael came up with 3 stress toys to give children with cancer, please visit his website
http://michaelsmeanies.com
thanks,
Paul Carroll
Wheeling, WV
July 27th, 2014
