Christmas lights in April?

Okay, what do I say. I have officially become one of those people. Yes...those people, the ones who leave their Christmas lights up ridiculously longer than they should. This used to be a major pet peeve of mine. When we would drive around and see lights on peoples houses I would really get annoyed. Anything after Valentines day was unacceptable. It would really bother me.

Now in all fairness this is the first time we have ever put up lights in Utah. I was all excited about finally having Christmas lights on our house, it really completed the Christmas feeling for me. What I didn't anticipate was that right after Christmas we would receive snow fall after snow fall. Before too long the snow drift made taking them down impossible. Okay no problem I thought. Its still winter, it's not like we are turning them on or anything. Then it started warming up just a little but this posed another problem. For those of you in cold weather you will understand this but what happens when the snow starts to melt is you get icicles. But not only that, along with icicles you get something called an ice dam. So now the lights are completely encrusted in ice.

So now here we are in, dare I say...April and they are still up. The snow is almost all melted, the ice is gone and we should have no excuse right? Nope, now the problem is mud. The places where we would place the ladder are much too muddy to get to the lights.

What now? What happens to you when you become a pet peeve? Do I need a support group or to go to counseling? I'm not sure, but I do know this, we probably won't be putting up lights next year.