Christmas Observer

Thumbnail: Shirley's mantlepiece decoration
Thumbnail: Braden with Shirley
Thumbnail: Christmas observer
Thumbnail: Ginger the cat
Thumbnail: Julia
Thumbnail: Snoopy the cat
Thumbnail: Braden opens a DS
Thumbnail: Nicole is happy
Thumbnail: Nicole's got attitude

Stepping back to the 25th, I awoke to the sounds of ebul­lient whis­pers com­ing from down­stairs as I lie in Julia’s bed, which she’d care­ful­ly made for me. I checked my watch, noticed that it was 6:40 a.m., and remem­bered that Shirley put her foot down about not open­ing any presents until sev­en. The kids were already up, of course, their inter­nal alarm clocks set to spring in antic­i­pa­tion, even after we stayed up late the night before, play­ing wrestling games until the threat of Santa not com­ing put them to bed.

Instead, Santa went all out this year, from Nintendo DS, to mp3 play­ers, to box­es on box­es of clothes, to DDR dance pads, to portable DVD play­ers, to games for every sys­tem. He also left me a mini remote-con­trol Mercedes SLK, and I’d nor­mal­ly say that he should­n’t have so he could spend more on the kids, but he also left Braden and Bill a mini Hummer and mini Mustang GT respec­tive­ly, so I had to accept the gift in order to race them.

Just being there was enough of a gift. As the kids ran around, unable to decide what to play with first, I start­ed to con­sid­er stay­ing so I could spend the day, but the respon­si­bil­i­ty of pri­or engage­ments and time with the par­ents kept me in check. We had a big greasy break­fast of bacon and eggs, but ____ was there to pick me up for the four hour dri­ve home before the turkey din­ner.

Next year, I decid­ed.

2 comments

  1. Wonderful pho­tog­ra­phy (as always). The shot of the boy open­ing the gift — his expres­sion is price­less!

  2. Thank you, I’m espe­cial­ly proud of some of these pho­tos. It was the first time that I had to use some of my new pho­to­graph­ic acces­sories, not to men­tion my slow­ly-increas­ing pho­to­graph­ic knowl­edge.

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