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<\/a><\/p>\nWe always had a\u00a0lot of gifts under the tree.\u00a0\u00a0 I loved shopping back then.<\/p>\n
Our two boys, nineteen months apart.\u00a0 They were always so excited about Christmas. too.<\/p>\n Our daughter. She must have been very happy with her present.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The boys watching with interest what I was unwrapping.\u00a0 Not a very pretty pose. Notice the playpen my foot is on. Do people use those anymore?\u00a0 It was like a cage for your kid when you wanted to keep them out of things.<\/p>\n I made both of our outfits that year.<\/p>\n I made both my boys’ outfits, too.<\/p>\n I went through a gingerbread house making kick for a while. I use to bake and bake before Christmas. This year, one batch of cookies.\u00a0 Everyone is on a diet of some kind.<\/p>\n Yes, I made these outfits also. My poor boys had to wear a lot of clothes that I made.\u00a0 I didn’t make quilts back then.<\/p>\n I really must have shopped a lot that year!<\/p>\n One year we went to the Virgin Islands. David’s mother ran a guest house down there and we spent Christmas with her.\u00a0 It seemed very strange to be where it was so warm at Christmas.<\/p>\n Here was David and our daughter with her cousins looking on as she opened a present.<\/p>\n We spent days at the beach in the middle of the Winter.<\/p>\n This was the view from David’s mother’s house.\u00a0 Not bad.<\/p>\n The years have flown by so quickly.<\/p>\n My mother and daddy loved Christmas.\u00a0 When all us kids were grown, we met at their house on Christmas Eve every year and gave each other gifts.<\/p>\n Mom opening a gift while two of her grandsons looked on.<\/p>\n My daddy loved having us all together. Behind him is my oldest brother, Jack, who passed away many years ago.\u00a0 I still miss him and can’t wait to see him again.\u00a0 He was in college before I even started school.\u00a0\u00a0 If you could see his senior picture, he looked like a young Clark Gable without the moustache. Jack was a very handsome man. And a kind man.\u00a0I’m so glad he was my brother.<\/p>\n Daddy’s sister, my Aunt Ruth is behind Daddy. She never married and lived with her parents until both of them died and then she came and lived with us. Family took care of each other back then.\u00a0\u00a0 If one didn’t have a home, they were taken in by family.\u00a0 My parents took care of my daddy’s father in his last days, my mother’s mother until she had to go into\u00a0a nursing home because mom could not lift her any longer and Aunt Ruth.\u00a0 Aunt Ruth was a very sweet lady and she always dressed so nicely and smelled so good.\u00a0 I don’t know what kind of perfume she wore, but I always loved it.\u00a0 She lived with us almost all through my childhood and after I married and left home.\u00a0 I’ll always think my brother became the reader and excellent student\u00a0he\u00a0became because Aunt Ruth spent hours reading him storybooks.\u00a0 The same ones, over and over again.<\/p>\n These final pictures are how I remember Christmas the best.<\/p>\n The looks of sheer delight on our children’s faces as they came downstairs Christmas morning.<\/p>\n It was always the same year after year.<\/p>\n Even when one was suffering from an earache, he was still excited Christmas morning.<\/p>\n And remembering David’s grandmother who was always so kind to me and really loved our children.\u00a0 The feeling was mutual.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n