The Holidays at the Pamphlet's Place

Christmas at the Pamphlet's is definitly a family affair. So much, in fact, we get 3!

Christmas Eve happens to be Grandparent's wedding anniversay. Ol' Railhead has moved one to the railroad tracks in the sky, but Grandma is still here, firmly planted, waving her magic hands across her autoharp as often as her arthritis will let her. All the local family get's together at either her place or my Aunt's place and we do a HUGE feast with all the trimmings. Grandma usually shares the story about how poor they were when they wanted to get married, so they purposly scheduled the wedding on Christmas Eve because the church was already decorated for the holidays. Grandma usually does her gift giving to the grandkids and great grandkids then, and we all hang out and chatter the night away. My parental units haul their guitars over and do some sing songs, but I'm tone deaf (aka, percussionist), so I do my best to keep up. Night usually ends around 11pm to midnight, and we all head home.

Christmas morning is Christmas morning. I remember growing up and my Mom was more excited because she'd wake my brother and I up close to 5am so she'd have ammunition to wake big grizzly bear Dad up.

Mom will be proud to know I've inherited her eagerness, but for my wife's sake, when Little Blue wake's up, that's when Christmas morning will begin. We'll do our own private Christmas, and I will probably rig the camcorder up the night before so I can just let it run while we're opening our presents one my one, chuckling as Jonathan tries to open his presents.

Then, soon after, the parental units and sibling unit with wife and cousin-to-be-in-womb will arrive, we'll do a little more gift giving, and feast again on an excellent meal. Traditioin usually states that we try and watch some movies for the rest of the day, but I've got a feeling we'll just be gabbing the day away.

Christmas 3 usually comes a week before or a week after the actual holiday, and involves my Dad's side of the family near Wichita, KS. We go down, repeat the feast, and do a white elephant game of sorts since it's too expensive to try and share gifts with over 40 people at the same time in the same house, most of which are in the same room. It's a lot of fun though, and I look forward to it every year.

The holidays to me are all about friends and family, and that's what I look forward to.

Though, spoiling my son AND getting lectured by Pink for doing so is a close second. :)

Should have seen her face when she brought in a box from Amazon today. "Blue...what have you been up too?"