Tuesday, January 6, 2009

I Remember That Christmas

I think we finally have finished all of our Christmas celebrating for this year. This may be remembered as the year that Christmas wouldn't end for our family. We started on the weekend before Christmas at Lady Di's parents home in northern Minnesota and ended on the weekend after New Year's at my folks' place in South Dakota. We've done a lot of driving, but thankfully, we hadn't had any blizzards to drive through.

This year will already be remembered by Number One Son as the Christmas of the Wii. Sweet Pea will probably agree, but her Easy Bake Oven is a close second. She is very excited to bake her first treat for her parents. She asked if she could bake something in the van on the drive home.
We definitely cut back on the Christmas presents this year. The kids got less than half of their usually number. But they didn't seem to mind. We didn't hear any complaining. Perhaps the Wii made up for it. Or perhaps, presents aren't what are really remembered from year to year. Family dinners, sledding and snowboarding, going to church and other family oriented activities will be remembered long after the toy batteries die.

I will remember this year for Lady Di running in her first 5k race on Thanksgiving. It was also SP's first year to hold her own lit candle at our church's candlelight service. I'll also remember N1S playing three Christmas piano pieces for his elementary's assembly.

These memories mean more to me and that's probably why they will stay with me for many Christmases to come. I hope to add many more of these kind of activities to our memories. I think de-emphasizing the importance of gifts will help strengthen our holiday spirit.

But I guess I probably will remember this year for Guitar Hero too, for a few months anyway.

Merry Christmas from SP, N1S and the SD Cousins


And here is a Christmas leftover. Every Christmas Eve we read The Night Before Christmas as a family before bedtime. Since Sweet Pea has become such a strong reader, we let her read it this year. Everything was going great until she read the line, 'And laying a finger inside of his nose,'. The rest of us started to snicker which upset SP so she didn't want to finish the story. We finally convinced her that we weren't laughing at her reading and she finished. But I think we have another Christmas memory.

7 comments:

OhCaptain said...

Guitar Hero is just simply fantastic. Wait til you get that first really good hand cramp.

We also love our Easy Bake Oven. Not sure if you caught this post I wrote a little while ago. We had a blast

Russell said...

Sounds like you had a very nice and extended Christmas! If I recall correctly back in the days when I supported organized religion (and those days are long ago given the heathen that I am - heh!) Christmas went from Dec 25 to Jan 6. Those are the 12 days of Christmas as I recall.

So it sounds as though your Christmas celebration was just about right! The past couple of weeks I have been transferring old VHS tapes to DVD and reliving many Christmases (yes there was a time when I celebrated Christmas before I became a living Scrooge!).

I strongly suggest you take lots of pictures and video of your family now as you will want to watch them later on. Of course every age is the best age - but children grow up very fast.

Take care.

The Father of Five said...

Great Post!

What a cute photo of your kids and their cousins!

We still have one more "Christmas" to complete... My parents.

We were going to celebrate the between Christmas and New Years.. But my mom got terribly ill (all better now)... Delayed until Saturday!

James (SeattleDad) said...

Great post. And what fun. We want to read "The night before Christmas every Christmas Eve to Lukas too.

BTW, I tagged you on my blog. Play along if you feel like it.

DJ Kirkby said...

8gasp8 I had an easy bake oven!!!!! They are the BEST. They don't sell them ove rin England or I would have bought N3S one, he loves cooking. Great pics.

Synchronicity said...

oh wow...an easy bake oven. I had one of those! It was amazing what you could bake with a light bulb!

I am new to your blog...just wandered over from Casdok's site.

Creative-Type Dad said...

I'm sure they'll remember the Wii and the nose.

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I'm a 40 year old dad of two. My wonderful wife, Lady Di, and I try to keep the kids from blowing things up here in central Minnesota.