They're all standing still and none of them are going any farther than the Greenwells' front lawn at Camden and Redmond avenues. Tony and Val Greenwell and many of their neighbors and local businesses have lit up the Almaden Valley night with their holiday spirit.

"He does this every year. You should see what it looks like at Halloween—this year he had a Pirates of the Caribbean theme," says Val about husband Tony and his holiday-decorating addiction. "The inside's mine."

Tony Greenwell, who runs his own computer networking business when he's not stringing up twinkling little lights, says he's been decorating for Christmas for about 25 years.

"I started when I was a kid—about 12 years old," he says. "It started out with a little, then a little more. I got carried away."

Cody Fallon, his 11-year-old stepson, is no Grinch when it comes to helping out.

"We did a little bit each night," says Cody. Cody and Greenwell figure they've spent about 20 hours each setting up for the festivities, and Cody says he'll probably keep up the family tradition when he has a house of his own.

Cody helped set out much of the yard art, which includes a manger and a lighted trumpeting angel. He also helped build a home-designed train lit with red and green rope lights that looks like it is chugging along the sidewalk carrying a brightly lit rocking horse destined for Greenwell's 3-year-old wide-eyed, Cindy-Lou-Who-look-alike daughter, Bailey.

Little by little is how another couple decked their walls, porch, roof and lawn this season.

"We started three weeks ago," says Carlo Rizzo. "The roof was tough because I have trouble with my back."

Rizzo and his fiancée, Carolyn Bates, who works as a hairstylist at Image, an Almaden Valley hair salon, were disappointed when the Santa they had set up in the front wound up missing one day.

"Somebody stole our Santa," Rizzo says.

Candy-colored lights drip from their roof, spilling onto their lawn and electrifying the corner of Cloverhill and Wallace, where the couple lives. Rizzo, a tailor who says he is "half-retired," says that he and Bates like that people drive by to enjoy their display.

"We like to go out ourselves," he says. "We sometimes go to Los Gatos [to look at decorations]."

Bates says she invites her clients to come by to enjoy their light show and that she thinks she decorates elaborately every year because her family—including her electrical contractor father—didn't when she was a kid.

"I guess it's a childhood thing. I want to light up my house," she says.

Bates' and Rizzo's spirit and light have inspired some of their neighbors; they point out homes across the way that have icicle lights dangling from their eaves. Each year, Bates says, she likes to add something new.

"This year, the icicles are new. So are the candy canes," she says.

New things have popped up on the rooftop of Almaden Plaza, at Almaden Expressway and Blossom Hill Road, as well.

"The last two pieces they've added are the welcome sign with the elves above Bed, Bath & Beyond and the train going over the archway," says Catherine Harris, spokeswoman for KC Enterprises.

KC Enterprises, based near Sacramento, is a distributor for Crystal Valley Decorations of Fowler, which manufactured the giant decorations shifting about on the rooftop of Almaden Plaza facing Highway 85.

"Most of them are animated," Harris says. "The elves climb the stocking, Santa plugs in and unplugs the tree, the book reader flips the pages and goes from one thought bubble to another. It is a real treat."

Unsure of exactly how many "C7" lights are atop the shopping center, Harris guesses there must be at least 10,000 bulbs up there.

"C7 and C9 lights are coming back big-time," says Shaila Beard, first assistant manager at the Branham Lane and Almaden Expressway Orchard Supply Hardware store. They are the large blue, green, red and gold retro-looking bulbs of yesteryear, which adorn many of the small trees propped up in front of many homes on Crystal Springs Drive, reminiscent of a time-honored tradition in Willow Glen neighborhoods.

Other trendy styles include the icicle lights, which Beard says the store runs out of almost as fast as it stocks them. The store, she says, has the largest holiday and patio sales of the chain's Bay Area stores.

"People are asking for the icicle lights like crazy," says Amie Golden, season associate.

Beard, Golden and Rite-Aid associate Cristina Rainwater all agree that the gold- or white-painted grapevine reindeer with the tiny white lights are red-hot sellers this season.

"We sold out of the animated bucks," Rainwater says. "Overall, we're selling more Christmas items this year than last."

Rite-Aid, Orchard Supply and other retail stores don't sell the massive decorations found flanking Almaden Plaza—the longest of which is the book reader, which stretches 54 feet long and is 19 feet tall; towering over the book reader is Santa and his 26-foot tree, soaring over Circuit City—but they do sell lawn ornaments, whose popularity is becoming inflated.

Rainwater says the Rite-Aid at Blossom Hill Road and Almaden Expressway sold out of the blow-up Santa, and Beard says the air-filled Santas and snowmen were gone after Thanksgiving at the Orchard Supply store where she has worked for 11Ž2 years.

Rite-Aid still has several inflatable 8-foot-high Grinches available, and Rainwater says they aren't selling as fast as the Cat in the Hat.

The Cat in the Hat is Bailey Greenwell's favorite lawn decoration. Circling the tree in her front yard are four wooden painted carousel horses on sticks under what Tony Greenwell says must be "a couple thousand lights" connected to about eight surge protectors. Greenwell—who also performs as a magician for kids' birthday parties—says he only lights the yard for a couple of weeks, and it costs him an extra "couple hundred dollars" on his December PG&E bill. That display is in stark contrast, he says, to how he lights his house during nonholiday hours. Greenwell says he doesn't let Val, his mural-painting wife—or the rest of the family, which includes his stepdaughter, Leland sophomore Chelsea Fallon, Cody, who goes to Bret Harte, and blonde-haired little Bailey Greenwell—turn on the lights in the house.

"I'm too economical—the rest of the time, I keep it dark," he says.