Christmas rolls on, Trudie goes tech

Did we have multiple Christmas celebrations when we were kids?  Were they spread out over days and weeks?

The answer is no.  Our parents would let us open gifts in the morning, shove us in the van, drive to Ipswich for lunch and presents, shove us back in the van and then drive to Beverly for dinner and more presents.  In Ipswich the family smoked like we were in a pool hall and you could barely make out Gram across the haze of the smoke cloud.  In Beverly, my tough Italian uncles would whack us in the back of the head to wish us a Merry Christmas.  Christmas was one day and one day only.  Looking at it through the lens I have today (Grandparent, old, tired...) I would say the old way sucked.  Of course seeing the family in one day was nice, but by the end of the day everyone smelled like smoke, had minor concussions from the Italian Uncles and was generally beaten down.  The Christmas magic ended with a slight stink about it.

Today, Christmas is done in a week or more.  For our Grandkids it started Christmas Eve with us.  From there it is like a victory tour.  The kids go the homes of their many Grandparents, real and fake, and receive more bounty.  The have real and fake aunts and uncles who bestow them with more riches.  Their "non-traditional" family seems to pick up random people all the time.  When they get older and have to explain to their girlfriend who Uncle AJ is, forget it...

But the pace is nice.  The visits feel more natural.  The kids get to spend more time with their families (let's face it, they get to spend more time with the presents they just got).  

I like how Christmas has evolved in my family and don't want to ever go back to the one day road tour. 

 Meanwhile, Mom came over for pizza night.  We tried to show her how to use the Mac.  The picture you see here is rarer than a Loch Ness monster sighting.  (I heard someone say that since we all have camera phones with an intense amount of megapixels taking sharp photos, isn't it interesting that there haven't been any pictures of Nessie and Big Foot?)

Mom was cute trying to navigate Google.  She was like Crocodile Dundee in New York city; totally out of her element.

We finished the night watching one of Jennie's favorite movies, The Holiday.  My Mom didn't want to have her picture taken for some reason.