Wagoner County woman is getting her home ready for Christmas

Friday, October 22nd 2004, 10:19 am

By: News On 6

Most of us are still busy with Halloween, and haven't begun to think about Thanksgiving, but News on 6 reporter Rick Wells went to Lake Crest near Fort Gibson Lake in Wagoner and found one family already setting out the Christmas decorations.

Carolyn Thompson has begun her big holiday project. She builds a winter village in her living room. "My Mother was very creative." Apparently she passed it on.

This is the 30th year she will give up most of the living room, to create a mountain village for Christmas. "It'll come down like that. I'll have a road that kind of zigzags down and I'll have houses over here and downtown here and downtown here."

And that's just the beginning. The town includes a mountain ski area, skiers ride up and down the mountain on a working ski lift. You've got to use a bit of imagination cause she's just getting started, but she has a photo album full of pictures of how it's looked over the years, every year the display gets bigger because she keeps getting new stuff. "I had a friend give me a couple of cows last year so this year, we're gonna have a barn and barn yard."

One year, one of her kids gave her a lighthouse, so she had to create a place for it. Some blue material for the water, she bunches it up to make it look like waves. When she gets stuck husband Larry helps. He created some power poles, towns got to have electricity. "We've got road workers and fire trucks." And hundreds of other townspeople, houses and churches and buildings of all kinds.

It takes more than a month to set up. Carolyn loves the project. "It's rewarding, very rewarding to me.â€ The goal is to get the whole village set up for Thanksgiving to begin the holiday season.

We'll send Rick back when it's finished to see how it looks.