Christmas 2004
Well, this is the year in closing, so all of the stock brokers out there are busy buying an selling, accountants are marking up how much money people gained and lost, and I am trying to recap on what has happened over this year. It's been quite a bit, if I think back on it correctly.
Each passing year seems to hold more and more things that slip away like snow on the winter wind. It is important not to let yourself get swept away too, to be the ice on the pond versus the drifts across it.
Christmas this year was good, but much less eventful than usual. We lazily awoke at about 9 AM to open gifts, much later than our usual 5 AM spree, but that was a few years ago now that I think about it. Eyes still crusty, we walked downstairs to the transformed library. In the corner near the window facing the porch was our small, faux Christmas tree that mom had purchased last year after she realized that it was really hard to put a live tree up by yourself, and was not much easier, even with the assistance of her petite college daughter. We have since traded the real thing for a smaller, managable faux tree, with lights built into it and a bottle of room freshener called "winter forest."
Below said faux tree resided a small pile of gifts for each of us. These were nicely wrapped gifts, but before we could attacked those, we opened the contense of our stockings. This is my favorite part of opening gifts, since I think the stockings contain the coolest presents. When we were younger, and up very early, my mother wisely put the stockings upstairs so that we could open them while we waited impatiently for her to get up. We were not allowed to go to the tree room by ourselves, and she had to be the first one down. Then she generally exlamed something along the lines of, "ohhhhh, Santa did come!"
There was no need for that this year, since we have become disillusioned teenagers (excluding myself, who has crossed the line into the twenties). None the less, we managed a nice Christmas, and the feeling of love was still thick in the room, and thankfully the presents of Jesus was not. Although, the Christmas miracle this year was that my father actually got my mother a presents, and, get this... WRAPPED IT! No one could believe it!
I think the best thing that happened on Christmas though was our Christmas Buggy Ride. Buggy can be interchanged with sleigh, depending on the year, but since there was not a flake of snow in sight, the sleigh stayed tucked away in the barn. We hitched our horse Zip up to the buggy and drove down to the beach, picking our neighbors up on the way. It made their day, and in turn, made ours :-) YAY Christmas!
Each passing year seems to hold more and more things that slip away like snow on the winter wind. It is important not to let yourself get swept away too, to be the ice on the pond versus the drifts across it.
Christmas this year was good, but much less eventful than usual. We lazily awoke at about 9 AM to open gifts, much later than our usual 5 AM spree, but that was a few years ago now that I think about it. Eyes still crusty, we walked downstairs to the transformed library. In the corner near the window facing the porch was our small, faux Christmas tree that mom had purchased last year after she realized that it was really hard to put a live tree up by yourself, and was not much easier, even with the assistance of her petite college daughter. We have since traded the real thing for a smaller, managable faux tree, with lights built into it and a bottle of room freshener called "winter forest."
Below said faux tree resided a small pile of gifts for each of us. These were nicely wrapped gifts, but before we could attacked those, we opened the contense of our stockings. This is my favorite part of opening gifts, since I think the stockings contain the coolest presents. When we were younger, and up very early, my mother wisely put the stockings upstairs so that we could open them while we waited impatiently for her to get up. We were not allowed to go to the tree room by ourselves, and she had to be the first one down. Then she generally exlamed something along the lines of, "ohhhhh, Santa did come!"
There was no need for that this year, since we have become disillusioned teenagers (excluding myself, who has crossed the line into the twenties). None the less, we managed a nice Christmas, and the feeling of love was still thick in the room, and thankfully the presents of Jesus was not. Although, the Christmas miracle this year was that my father actually got my mother a presents, and, get this... WRAPPED IT! No one could believe it!
I think the best thing that happened on Christmas though was our Christmas Buggy Ride. Buggy can be interchanged with sleigh, depending on the year, but since there was not a flake of snow in sight, the sleigh stayed tucked away in the barn. We hitched our horse Zip up to the buggy and drove down to the beach, picking our neighbors up on the way. It made their day, and in turn, made ours :-) YAY Christmas!