favorite Christmas memories.....

It seems that every Christmas instantly becomes my favorite Christmas with every passing year. With the girls growing older, every year brings something new. This year, the "mystery" has been solved by everyone in the house. Santa will still come, but it'll be different.

I love surprises at Christmas, and I especially like being the one who does the surprising. Seeing the look on someone's face when they get something they want and don't know they're getting it? Priceless.

Here's some of my favorite Christmas memories:

When I was 4, we went to my grandmother's house in Virginia on Christmas day, just like we always did when I was growing up. The great thing about Christmas in East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia is that there's a good chance for a white Christmas every year. I guess this would have been 1968. I was allowed to bring one toy on the trip with me that Santa had delivered to our house. I remember bringing this huge farm set. You remember the kind - vinyl-wrapped cardboard barn, equipped with dozens of plastic farm animals, a tractor and other stuff. The snowflakes were huge, and the snow was sticking to everything. I got out of the car, and the snow was up to my knees. True, I was four, so how high could that have been? (Even now, at my current height, how bad would that be?) We had to park up the road from my grandmother's house because we weren't sure we could get out of the driveway if we parked there. I remember having to make each step really high, while carrying my farm set by the handle in one hand and holding either Mom's or Dad's hand. I remember smiling the whole way, excited to see all this snow.

The next Christmas, all I wanted was the new Billy Blastoff toy and accessories. It was 1969, and the US had landed on the moon a few months before, so alot of the toys were space-related. I remember getting the Billy Blastoff, two different moon vehicles, and a small monitor that plugged into Billy's backpack. I took it to kingergarten and showed everyone when we got back to school.

One year, when I was about 18, my mom wrapped a big "family" present and put it under the tree. We tried to get her to give us a hint about what was in this huge package, but she wouldn't. My sisters and I were convinced that it was a computer, probably a Commodore 64. (I've got more computing power in my 3 1/2 year old Handspring Visor Platinum handheld than that computer ever thought of having.) For weeks, we anticipated playing games on our computer on Christmas morning. What was it really? An ottoman. An ugly, brown, vinyl ottoman. Have I ever mentioned that my mom can sometimes have a sick sense of humor? Yeah, we were disappointed, but it actually was funny.

There are so many more of these memories, but time won't allow me to write them all down at once. Anyone else out there have any great Christmas memories they'd like to share?