Some Christmas Memories

I've noticed that the past couple of posts I've made have been pretty down. So I've decided to go through some of the things that I like about this season over the past thirty-*cough* years.

1) The anticipation of kids who are looking forward to Christmas day, their enthusiasm can be contagious at times. When they're just old enough to get out of bed by themselves and they sneak out into the front room, then you can hear their little feet come running down the hall to wake you with their little excited "SANTA CAME!! SANTA CAME!! GET UP!" and you get out of bed with all of 15 minutes of sleep after wrapping and putting all of their Santa presents out not more than 20 minutes ago, you get your coffee and watch them circle the tree in sheer excitement, not knowing which present to dive on first.

2)When I was a kid, we use to take the wrapping paper rolls and have roll "sword" fights, which I would be beaten within an inch of my life. We'd break the first roll each then go running into the house asking mom where she stashed the other rolls. I think she use to hide them from us just to torture us and make us tear the place apart to find them, after we found them, she would make us put everything back before we could go outside and beat each other stupid with the rolls again. "ARGH!! MOM!! Don't you know that the fate of the intergalactic empire is at stake? Can't we clean the room up after? " Darth Mom- "No" Jedi force super imperial special interceptor trooper MM and The Evil Darth Older Brother "Ahhhh man...." as we slunk back to the room to clean, which would always turn into yet another inter galactic duel to the death with the pilfered wrapping paper rolls.

3) Sleeping with my brother and sister in my sister's room on Christmas eve, lying there trying to figure out what Santa was going to bring for us.

4) Going to the store with my dad on Christmas Eve to get my mom a huge bottle of $5 perfume, because if there's more of it, then it surely must be the best stuff, right? Then my mom's look of hidden horror as she opened it, gave me a kiss, then while looking at my dad and saying through gritted teeth "Thanks HON-EY" I know for a fact that you could probably have powered a tug boat with the fuel that was in that perfume bottle, but she never made a "stink" about it, pun intended.

5) Playing with my slot cars that Santa brought, when our dad would relinquish the controller. He showed us how to take the little cars apart, configure them for the best speed and then put them back together, he'd also show us how to put a little bump in the track so that the metal contacts would still touch, but which enough speed they'd jump the track, if you put enough speed on the car and enough of a bump in the track we found out that you could get the cars to jump up onto the coffee table and nearly take out mom's coffee cup. Well until she put the tissue box in front of the cup to protect it.

6) Putting up and decorating the fake tree every year. Mom would pull out the ornaments to each of us kids and we'd put them on the tree in clumps, bare spots be darned. That whole process would take what felt like an eternity, with lights, tinsel, the ribbons, bobbles, and little hanging decorations, and I miss every second of it.

7) Going over to my aunt and uncle's for dinner with the rest of the family, the noise of the older kids playing their music and laughing, my dad and uncle on the couches snoring away and my mom, aunt and the older girls in the kitchen talking about everything under the sun.

8) Thinking that I was going to be a hero when I found a Tickle Me Elmo in a Toy's R Us during the great Elmo drought of 1996, I was so proud of myself for getting one for my little girl, I took it home, wrapped it extra specially, put a huge bow on it with ribbon, I spent nearly 2 hours wrapping Elmo to be just perfect. I made sure that it was going to be the "big present" for MG, when the other presents were done and the paper melee settled down, I pulled out the "big present" so that MG could tear into it. Now here's how it went in my mind 'MG would open the present, after admiring the perfect wrapping, the ribbon and the just right bow, the would look at the Elmo and tickle him, giggle with extreme joy then jump into my lap and give me the biggest hug her little arms could muster, saying Thank you daddy, it's the best present in the whole world, I'm the luckiest little girl EVER!" What actually happened was she ripped into the wrapping, with a total disregard to the perfect wrapping, grabbed Elmo which went off, laughing giggling and jiggling, at which point she dropped Elmo, climbed into my lap as if Elmo was coming at her with a immunization shot, crying. She wanted absolutely nothing to do with Elmo, he scared the crap out of her. If I remember correctly, her favorite toy that year was a cardboard box that held a quilt that her mom received, so we took out some crayons and decorated the box for her and took Elmo back to the store the next day.

9) The look on my parents face when it was all over, tired, exhausted to be exact, but a look of pure joy at watching their kids enjoying the hard work and effort that they poured into getting each and every gift, each one hand picked and selected for just us. Or it could have been the pure joy of not having to clean up the mess that we made, because that's what we as kids had to do for our real present to our parents.

10) Going back and thinking of things for this list.

I may be Grinchy sometimes, but I do love this time of year, it tends to bring out the best in most people. Sometimes I wonder why we can't make it last throughout the year, but if we did that, than this wouldn't be the most wonderful time of the year, would it?