A New Christmas Tradition

DH is very good about helping me clean floors. He is a handy guy with a vacuum and has no problem moving furniture around to vacuum under it.

However, this year he started a new tradition. He tried to suck up the draping I had around the stereo - to hide all the cords and stuff underneath.

So this new tradition got me thinking about Christmases past. I remember how the girls used to play with Colorforms. And they discovered that they stuck to the doorwall, so our doorwall was always covered in these little shapes, people and other stuff. Cleaning that stuff out of the doorwall tracks was not fun though!

Older daughter's first Christmas - her paternal grandfather, who is known to his granddaughters and their cousins as Big Kid - spent a hundred dollars on mechanical toys for an eight-month-old child who was terrified of this stuff. Especially the Indian Monkey who beat a drum. Interesting that Older daughter really likes all kinds of monkeys now. Her second Christmas was spent with us yelling at the dog to leave the Christmas tree alone until we discovered it was OD pulling off all the decorations.

Younger daughter's first Christmas Santa brought her a little doll with a rattle in it called Jingle Baby. She slept with that until she received her little brown bear for a birthday gift from OD. YD gifted OD with a white bear who was promptly named Teddy. YD and OD still have these well-loved stuffed animals.

This year, I tried to start a new tradition of going out for dinner on Christmas Eve. After all, I am the only who cooks the big family dinner, I deserve a night off. Good idea in theory, but most places closed really early and we got kicked out of Steak n Shake at 6:15. Maybe next year we'll get pizza!