my favorite christmas

Don’t you just love Christmas? I love it so much. Everything about it makes me smile. Although stressful especially in this economy, there’s still something magical about it, huh? I have always adored it even when I was a little girl. The anticipation would drive me insane. I can remember my brother, sister and I would get underneath the tree to see what was for each person. My mom would only put out so many gifts then Santa brought the big gifts Christmas Eve. When my mom would go to work, my brother and I would unwrap the presents to see what they were and wrap them back. Until we got busted of course.  We used to have an aluminum tree with a color wheel. It rotated and my mother would turn it on and the wheel would spin and turn the tree colors and then we would stick our arms in the tree and it would send it into reverse mode. Drove her nuts! Seriously, nervous breakdown if you made the tree go the opposite direction. Now that I look back on it, that tree was nothing but a huge weapon. You could have stabled someone with the limbs. I wonder what ever happened to that tree? Hmmmm.. pondering.

My favorite Christmas was when I received the Barbie Dream House. I was the hot chick on the farm, let me tell you.  A fully furnished million Barbie dollars home, and came with a purple corvette. My Barbie’s weren’t homeless anymore. We moved from a cardboard box to Beverly Hills or Dixon Springs 2^nd floor of Dusty’s bedroom. I played with that thing for hours. My dad set it all up. I think he had more fun at Christmas than the kids did. He loved to see our eyes light up when we got our gifts. That man could rip off wrapping paper in two point two seconds and move on to the next present like a sushi making factory. I remember my friends looking at it in awe and it defiantly didn’t come cheap. I think that thing was probably $200 even back 30 years ago. The greatest part of this story is, I learned to share. The cardboard box my Barbie’s lived in, I was so generous and passed it along to my sister. She now lived in the low income housing section of Barbie land and drove a yellow and green Tonka truck donated by my brother and I knew her Barbie’s would appreciate it. It was the gift that kept on giving. She reminds me of this story often (sigh).

Now that I have a son, Christmas through his eyes is so much more special. I can only imagine what my parents felt and saw and now I get to feel that as well. The pure excitement, waking up early to see what Santa brought. And then our tradition is our stockings. Every year on New Year’s Eve on Santa’s way back to the North Pole, he stops and leaves something in the stockings. This is a tradition that has been in my family for as long as I can remember and I have adopted it as my own to carry on and I hope that my son will carry it on to his children. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year my friends!  Here is one of my favorite pictures of my son at Christmas. He was 10 months old. 

XO,

Dusty

months old.