LIVERMORE – Tony Maxwell grumbles some about the work to erect the 20 inflatable Christmas decorations on his and wife Terri’s front lawn each year. But he still sketches a blue print so all the Santas, snowmen and other holiday cohorts fit, and he adds to the collection each year.

“He wants to show everybody he’s a hard heart but let a child stop and he melts,” Terri said of her husband’s grumbling.

Tony smiled.

“I have even gone to the point to measure the length of our lawn to find the center,” he said.

It all started when Terri went on a shopping trip with one of her daughters and brought home an 8-foot inflatable Santa Claus.

She did waver a little, she said, when she thought that her husband might not be happy with the purchase but it was fleeting. She did it anyway. Then she bought a snowman and a Grinch.

It was her renewed Christmas spirit that prompted her.

That was several years ago when the couple and their teenage children lived on Crash Road in Jay.

Now Tony, 42, and Terri, 44, owners of the Livermore Falls Baking Co., live on Route 4 near the Livermore Falls line and the display covers the length of the lawn.

On Thanksgiving evening, that holiday’s inflatable decorations came down and Santa and a snowman were staked to the ground and inflated. The rest followed the next day.

This year it took members of the family six hours to put up the collection.

Even before that, Tony had made sure all the Santa hats are cut and sewn to a point so they don’t flop down.

The largest inflatables are a Santa and a snowman at 12 feet tall. The smallest is the stock car – new this year – at 3 feet.

They’re up all the time unless the wind blows strong, Tony said.

The couple decided when they started that if they couldn’t keep up with the light bill they’d stop doing it. So far, it hasn’t happened.

They have lots of stories to tell about their holiday adventures, including one about a man walking into their house one Christmas season wanting to buy an inflatable and catching Tony in his underwear.

“He thought we were a store,” Tony said with a laugh.

Friends always thought it was her that kept the collection growing and going up, only to find out it was 95 percent Tony, Terri said.

They estimate their holiday inflatable collections cost them $3,000 to $4,000 – they decorate for most holidays and the Super Bowl – with half of that in Christmas decorations.

They’ve added snow globes and a Santa who reads “The Night Before Christmas” as someone gets near.

That’s if the batteries haven’t run down.

The couple’s living-room faces the road so they watch from their seats as people peer out the windows of their vehicles as they ride by.

They see the schoolchildren cup their hands around their eyes to look and the senior citizens’ smiles “glow,” Terri said.

Initially, the decorations went up for the children’s joy.

“We just love little kids and it has grown to all ages,” Terri said.

Even college students and truck drivers stop and look, Tony said.

A home-made thank-you card was left at their home one year telling them that the decorations brighten the holidays.

“Now we have people looking forward to it and when they have a night to go out and look, we’re definitely on the list,” Terri said.