Our Smart Home

Our family enjoys celebrating Christmas.  A lot.  We take our Christmas decorating very seriously.

For most of the last decade, we've had a freshly chopped Christmas tree delivered from New Hampshire (how else do you make sure your Christmas tree is fresh in Manhattan without renting a car and taking a day trip off the Island?).

This year, I decided to upgrade our incandescent Christmas lights to LED lights because they are so 2001 and get pretty hot.  After a bit of research, I ended up ordering enough commercial-grade LED lights so that our tree can be seen from a few blocks away.

I realized that bending down to plug in and out the Christmas tree, with the plug located all the way behind the tree is annoying.  So, I decided to look into timers so that the lights would go on and off by themselves.

Then I realized that instead of a timer, I should just get a remote control device to turn the lights on and off.

Then I realized that, instead of a simple remote control, I should get a wifi device so we can operate the lights from our phones (regardless of whether we are in the apartment or not).

And then I realized that I may as well get a good portion of the other lights on our home connected to wifi. So, I got enough other smart devices to hook up most of our other lights.

Then I realized that, since we already have one of the original Amazon Echos, a smart home device that is a key member of our family, I should make sure that everything can be controlled through our Amazon Echo.

Then I realized that we may want to control our electronic devices when we aren't near our single, lonely Amazon Echo, so I decided to get another Amazon Echo.

Then I realized that we enjoy streaming music using our Amazon Echo, and linking them together is a great way to have music playing through our home.  But two Amazon Echos don't really fill our whole apartment with music.

So, I got two more Amazon Echos.

And that's the story of why we have four Amazon Echos and all these smart devices in our little apartment and why you'll constantly hear the girls saying things like:

"Alexa, turn on the Christmas tree."

"Alexa, what time is it?"

"Alexa, play Christmas music."

"Alexa, what's the weather outside?"

"Alexa, tell me a joke."

"Alexa, let's play a game."

"Alexa, dim the light by the front door."

 "Alexa, set the timer for ten minutes."

 "Alexa, what's my news flash?"

"Alexa, in what year did New York become a state?"

"Alexa, play music in all the rooms in our home."

"Alexa, how do you spell Westchester?"

"Alexa, how are my favorite sports teams doing?"

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(We went to Best Buy this morning, and a guy asked someone who works there what the difference is between two Echo devices.  The worker said something like, "Ummm...I dunno."  I jumped in, "I'll take this question."  The guy asking the question suggested I get a job selling the devices.