Christmas Lights

Why is it that when you go to put up the Christmas lights that worked great when you packed them away last year, but now only half the string lights up? Whats up with that? Well this year as usual we brought the lights in to test them before we put them up (smart thinking right?)
Half of each strand worked, the other half didn't light up well I don't know about you, but trying to find out the problem is just not worth the effort, so in the garbage they went. Off to the store to buy more lights. I bought 4 boxes of icicle lights, ran home and got the ladder out and set up, opened the first box only to discover that all the lights are BLUE ok, not exactly what I wanted, but hey their just lights right? So we proceed to put up the lights, every thing looks great!

Ok now fast forward 24 hrs, I go out to turn on the lights and nothing, nada black as black can be. So for four nights we have had Christmas lights up that don't work. Today we decide to try and figure out the problem. I think we put too many strings together end to end (I'm a genius right?) So out comes the ladder again and we start taking the lights down, I figure if we disconnect the lights at the beginning of the forth set it should work out, we can plug the last half of the lights in a different outlet and all should be well.........WRONG!!! We finally end up taking down three sets and it ended up being a loose wire in the first set, so lucky for us that I had purchased an extra set. Now we have our outside lights up and even though they are not the color I wanted, they are working LOL. And as my dear hubby says "hey their just Christmas lights!"

Ok now lets just hope that putting up the Christmas tree goes a little better than the outside light project.