The Ghost of Christmas Past

Santa and I going over my list. Could the bangs be any shorter?

Christmas was wonderful time yesterday with my family. Food, laughter, good memories of Mom, stories, and games of Dominos. Last night I looked through pictures of Christmas' past and smiled as I remembered.

 Here I am the second one on the floor with my cousins. Do you remember Shirley Temple's movie "The Little Princess" with the little rich girl crying saying "I don't want a doll, I want a machine gun..."? Well that was me. My boy cousin next to me was my best playmate and we played guns. I still have that baby doll and it looks like new. The gun was worn out.

This was our first year of marriage and our first Christmas tree in our apartment. No one told me you had to water live trees. We had avocado green shag carpet. As you would sit there you could hear tingling sounds from needles falling in the carpet. They don't vacuum out. The rest of time we lived there you could hear us say "ouch" when we walked.

I love this one. Mom wanted leather boots for Christmas from Dad. She did everything she could to make sure we understand exactly which boots she wanted. The little A on them, brown, size and where they were and how much. I think close to $100. 

Dad said he raised girls to shop so he would never have to go in a mall in his life. So being the good daughter that I was, I went out and found a pair of white plastic "go go" boots, wrong size and wrapped them up. I don't know which face was more shocked--Mom trying to look pleased or Dad sick that he payed that much for those. She finally got the right boots.

This picture shows a family tradition that goes back as far as I can remember. The men eat too much, then sit down and undo their top button on their pants and go to dream world. The snores would run everyone out of the room.

I love looking back.