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We had a wonderful quiet Christmas morning.  After opening gifts, we went to Waffle House, which is our normal Christmas tradition.

Six more days until Christmas.  I only have to work 3 of them, which I think is going to become 2.5.  Yesterday my sister came down from Athens and we visited with her and her family.  It’s my niece Elinor’s first Christmas.  I gave Jennifer a DVD of all of the videos that I mentioned here.  After I give my dad a copy, they will be on YouTube and available right here on this blog.  This afternoon, we visited with Kimberlie’s family.  All of the kids had a good time, and if these early holiday get-togethers are any indication, my kids will make out like bandits this year.

We’ve been to “The Fish Store” at least 5 times this season.  I don’t really care for hunting, camping, or fishing (we stay in hotels and buy food at grocery stores) so we don’t go there often.  We do, however, take the kids and let them get the free crafts and Santa photos.

Thanks Bass Pro Shops, even though I can’t find one thing in your store that I would ever buy!

This morning, I had the opportunity to accompany Mackenzie’s class to the mall to see Santa.  Last year, they saw the jolly fat fellow at the local redneck store, which is appropriately named after a fish.  I did photo collages for them last year and was invited to photograph the class again this year.

I was amazed at how many stay-at-home-moms have nothing better to do than accompany their kids on preschool field trips.  The drive from the preschool to the mall was as long as a small funeral procession.  In an effort to stay on topic and not start ranting about how much I loathe stay-at-home-moms, that’s all I’ll say about them.

Mackenzie's class posing for the parent paparazzi

Mackenzie’s teacher had a special arrangement with Santa for me to take photos, but not in Santa’s usual chair.  Apparently, that would violate some mall contract or something.  The kids, however, didn’t seem to mind visiting Santa on a mall bench several feet away.

Mackenzie with the Mall Bench Santa

Mackenzie shares her Santa letter

Afterwards, the class walked down to the ice cream place formerly known as Baskin Robbins, which had promised to be open at 10:00 in the morning.  Unfortunately, the indian who runs the shop must have decided that nobody would care for ice cream that early in the morning when its 30 degrees outside, and decided not to open.  So down to the food court Wendy’s at the other end of the mall with 14 kids we went.  After all, a Frosty on a frosty morning makes perfect sense to a class of 4 year olds!

Mackenzie shows off her loot from Santa

A Frosty on a frosty morning

I took these photos a week or so after Halloween (yes, we put our tree up that early!).   I intended to get Christmas cards done, but I procrastinated and now I don’t really care about Christmas cards anymore.  Lucky for you, my blog readers, because now I’m posting them here.  Enjoy!

Enjoy your virtual Christmas card photo from our family to yours!

Tonight, we went up to the preschool for Mackenzie’s last holiday open house.  Of course, she had a similar program when she was 2 and again when she was 3.  Unfortunately, my video camera wouldn’t work, but I did get video of her practicing in front of the tree:

Enjoy a few photos as well:

Two weekends ago, we put up our Christmas tree! Traditionally, we have always put it up the weekend following Thanksgiving. Not this year! I decided that it was too much work to do for just one month. Also, I have other plans for that weekend and I needed to go ahead and shift around some junk in the attic anyway. Besides, all of the stores have had their Christmas stuff out since August.

That leaves some serious holiday confusion here. We still have two small pumpkins in our living room, only a few feet from Christmas decorations. And outside, a Christmas wreath hangs on our door overlooking two pumpkins and mums near our porch. I’m pretty sure the outside lights are going up this weekend!

Two years ago, after my mother died, I found five Super-8 film reels in my parents basement.  After shelving them for a while, I decided to finally do something with them.  I searched the internet for months to find someone who could convert the reels to a digital format at a decent price and found a company in Texas.  I was a little hesitant about shipping the reels to Texas because I had no idea what was on them.  I finally decided that by not knowing the contents of the films, I wouldn’t miss them if they were lost so two weeks ago, off they went.

Today, I received my films back, along with a DVD of the contents, and my portable hard drive that I sent with an AVI of the films.  Even though I really had to pee, I immediately proceeded to watch the movies. I finally discovered what was on them:

• Christmas 1980
• Christmas 1981
• my third birthday (February, 1982)
• my sister’s first birthday (September, 1982)
• my fourth birthday (February, 1983)

The clips also include many other special moments.  What is most important, however, isn’t what is on the video, but rather who is on the video.  All of the videos contain my parents, my grandparents (all of whom are long gone), and other cousins, relatives, and friends.  Many of them I am still connected to via Facebook but several of them are gone.  While watching the clips, I both laughed and cried.  This was the best package that I have ever received from UPS.

Tonight, I shared the clips with my family.  It’s amazing how much my kids resemble my sister and I and how much my sister resembles one of my aunts and how my mother aged to resemble her mother.  What was my uncle thinking wearing those red shoes — even in the 1980s?  And the clothing and hairstyles?  There were several toys in the clips that I held onto and passed on to my kids!

Of course, the clips will be uploaded to YouTube and featured right here.  But not yet.  I’m going to package the clips on a DVD as a Christmas present to my sister and father.  Although neither read this blog, they do occasionally look at YouTube.  I don’t want to spoil the surprise.

Fall/Halloween went great.  Tristan took 1st place in his school’s pumpkin carving contest for the traditional division.  (It’s actually a parent pumpkin carving contest, which is obvious if you saw the competition.)  Later, he took 3rd place in a costume contest.  His costume was actually store-bought this year, but he was the only boy in the 5-6 year old division so they included him in the top three.  Yay for affirmative action!  We also hit three different fall festivals, a pumpkin patch (twice), trick-or-treating, and of course a 5K for me. Enjoy a few photos below:

This past weekend, before I ran the Labor Day Road Race, we snuck away to the beach.  I somehow managed (after much persistance) to score an awesome deal on Hotwire for Jekyll Island during Labor Day weekend and off we went.  It was our last chance to get away since our fall schedule is totally packed, thanks mostly to soccer.

Since I neglected to post the Myrtle Beach pictures from our July vacation, I thought I might post a few from this getaway: