Merry Christmas

Hope that Christmas was good to everyone out there this year... It's supposed to be good every year I know, but with all stress of family gatherings and shopping, the commercialized 'crap' that plagues the holiday, and political correctedness issues of the season, the goodness of the holiday can get buried...making it suck for so many of us from time to time...

But for us, not this year... it's been all good (so far)...very tiring, but all good.

First, we headed out to Hotlanta on the 23rd... Taking a cue from the Heavy E travel guide, we decided to avoid the stress of interstates and took back roads as far as we dared before picking up I-20 near the GA state line. Turned out to be a beautiful, relaxing drive...until Atlanta, that is, where I-285 can test anyone's patience. Nothing like screaming along with a flow of traffic on a 5 lane highway going 90 in a 55 mph zone. Much stress... At least I grew up there, so I'm used to it...

Got to spend that evening with my folks and my brother. It was nice to see them... Had our "Christmas" (present swap) with them on Christmas Eve, had some good food, then packed back in the car to head back to Decatur in the evening. Again, once we got off I-20 near Lincoln, AL, the trip turned into a very stress-free easy drive, and it only took us 3.5 hours to get home.

Today was probably the most relaxed Christmas Day ever...at least since I was a kid. Just Stacey, Kailyn, and me. Kailyn really enjoyed waking up to some new toys, and Stacey and I just loved watching our efforts pay off. It makes all the difference in the world if you go into a holiday more concerned about someone else's happiness than your own. I can't wait 'til she can start comprehending more about the real meaning of Christmas and starts to understand the story about Jesus and all that...

Only downside of all this was the fact that many of the toys Kailyn received make a LOT of noise... What were we thinking???

J-mo came over this evening, had some more Christmas grub, then we watched "Collateral." Pretty good flick...

Anyway, after reading J-mo's blog, I got to thinking about some of the fun Christmas 'stuff' I received as a kid, too...

• Atari 2600 - have to agree big time with J-mo on this one. By the time we stopped playing Combat and Asteroids, the sun had gone down...
• Star Wars Toys - the X-wing where you pushed R-2 to make the s-foils open, and had the button that made the engine sounds. The Tie-Fighter where you squeezed the buttons to make the wings fall off. The Millenium Falcon that you could take the top off of and see inside...
• Train sets and Race tracks....TRC, Tyco...I loved the electric smell of those things once they got warmed up...
• A pedal-powered red firetruck. That's my first Christmas memory...driving that thing around my parents' house, bumping into everything...
• An Erector set - Dunno why, but I loved that thing. I spent so much of the day putting together metal tanks and spaceships, that it was - again - dark outside before I knew it, and that depressed me, because that meant Christmas was over, and I never looked up from my erector set all day. (Sadly, "Erector" today would probably elicit more giggles from people than it did then...heh...I'm giggling myself...).

As for one standout Christmas memory...One year...I must've been about 10, neither my brother or I could sleep at all. My mom had told us we could go down when the sun was up, so we literally watched out the window most of the night (we had no clock in our room at the time). I mistook the glow of some halogen street lamps in the distance for the sunrise, and we were downstairs at 3 a.m. (sans parents) looking at everything 'Santa' had left for us... I can still remember the anger and disappointment on my mom's face when she came down to find out what all the noise was... That was the last year we went down without checking with them first...LOL... I still remember, though...that was the year of my first TYCO train set and Stomper vehicles (those little battery-powered 4X4 vehicles). Still, the day turned out to be really good after that. I can still remember trying to get the engine on that train set to churn out smoke from the fluid you poured into the engine. It never did quite work...heh...