Ho, Ho, Ho

when you're single traveling around on the holidays typically isn't that big of a deal. when you're married it becomes a little more hectic because of having a completely new set of family members to go see. when you're married with kids it's even more trying because of trying fruitlessly to wrangle the kids in their holiday best, put them in a good mood, the fuss and muss of putting them in to and then out of a vehicle, ge tthem all cleaned up, THEN going inside to see one of the two (or more) sets of family for the holidays,.... it's all very, very trying.

then i think of the people like the duggars. you know, the woman in arkansas who has the, what's the word,... elastic uterus. that a good descriptive comment? holy cow. 18 kids! can you imagine them coming to your house for a holiday dinner? i don't know if i should be empathetic to that woman or not. she likes having kids, and she likes having sex, and i like both of those things but gee whiz! 18???

i can't imagine how big their tree must be to have all those present under the tree. i know ours is a normal sized tree with a lot of presents for our 3 kids but that has to be larger than the one at rockefeller plaza. i guess it's all good as long as we have a tree.

our kids are growing older as are everyone else's. it seems that things are dwindling down a little, traditions are changing somewhat. some of the normal people and things we've done on the holidays are morphing in to new traditions; some good, some unforeseen, some not so good.

the people who are coming to our holiday gatherings are like normal. we have the core group that comes to them but on occasion someone new will be thrown in to the mix. we also have those who used to be a part but with a death here, a move there, some of those people stop coming. it's sad because we don't get to see some of these people on a regular basis and the one or two times a year is now cut in half if not more. family i grew up seeing on holidays no longer comes. why? anyone's guess really. it's the holiday season and everyone "should" like to be with family. i just hope i'm not a lonely bastard when i grow up around the holidays. i would be a real grump to be pissed off at the world because i couldn't be with my kids.

our son wrote a letter to santa the other day and i got a reply in my email that i need to give him. our oldest daughter likes santa. our youngest daughter loves seeing him on tv but freaks out and screams her damn head off when she sees him in person and is supposes to go sit on his lap. i just wait for the day when the three of them get to deal with their own kids and going to the mall to see santa. should be interesting.

then there's the toys. i used to be a picky bastard and get pissed when i didn't get what i wanted. i would sit and peruse the sears and jc penny catalogs for hours on end writing down everything i wanted. i'd write the page, the items, how many of each, and come that fateful day i'd be so looking forward to seeing all my bounty. i'd typically get none. little did i know that my mother usually had her shopping done before july 1st of the year even though we always were asked what we'd like to have for christmas.

all we had when we were kids was to write a letter and drop it in the box outside the post office. you can't "pray" to santa. we had no email. we did get to see him in the malls, but how was he gonna remember all those kids and their wants? i never saw him write anything down. maybe he had a photographic memory. must've been cloudy since i didn't get what i wanted.

usually the days leading up to christmas day my brother and i liked to go around and see which boxes were ours, look at the tags and stack each other's in our own areas. one year i actually was a bad boy (go figure) and slowly tore off little pieces so i could see what it was under the wrapping paper. needless to say, that wa the one present i opened christmas eve. it was a train bottle of cologne from avon. i remember it well as that was the only time i ever did that. one year i got in trouble and was looking around the house for presents mom hid and found a puppet under her bed. it was supposed to be for me but since i snuck around and found it my brother ended up getting it. i was so pissed.

probably the funniest, and i still smile about it, was one year when our mom got tired of my brother and me loking to see which presents were ours. she put codes on the boxes so we wouldn't know which box was for which one of us. come christmas morning she forgot the code. i'd open a box and be suprised and all happy and then i'd hear, "no, that's not for you. it's for your brother." and to make it worse there wasn't just one code for each of us, there were multiple codes for the two of us so that went on all morning. what a pain. i was happy and giddy just to be trodden over with santa's own sleigh because i had opened what belonged to my brother.

well, i guess it could have all been worse but i'm still here. i still believe in santa. our kids believe in him (for now). i see santas all over the place so i know "he" is real. i see some of the things "he" does so i definitely know he's real. christmas is very commercialized, unfortunately, but as long as the spirit of giving is still around i guess i can live with that. i like to see people happy with things they've gotten and i like feeling good about what i've done or been able to do for someone, even though it's because of a materialistic item; i like to know that i can still make people smile.