Wednesday, January 03, 2007

It was a dream...

Back to work last night; after the initial round of "Happy New Years" and "Welcome Backs" and "was Santa good to you", it was like we never left!

New Year's Eve we did the November, December and January birthdays at my sister's house, along with a New Years Eve party. My Dad used to sit everyone down and show the family slides, and last year my sister and I tried to revive that, much to the chagrine of some of our kids. We only went through 2/3 of them last year; this year we did the other 1/3. I quit playing with photography after Dad died, partly from expense and partly because there were just too many memories, so this 1/3 was the slides of my boys and our family from when they were born 'til Bill was 5 (Dad died in '83). We hadn't seen a lot of these since then; some my sister had never seen. It went much better this year...

My mother didn't go; as she said her legs were bothering her and she'd rather stay at the nursing home. We didn't argue...

We buy gifts for each other and the kids from her; the DVD she bought Noel it turned out Noel had bought herself (The Lake House). Since we didn't buy it for ourselves, though we liked the movie, we kept it and spent New Years Day going back to the antique mall she and Dottie had been to last Saturday to look for a wooden grain bucket she had put back but really liked. Dottie had bought herself a Fairbanks scale that day (she is a descendant of the Fairbanks family), and gone back on Sunday to look for a piece that was missing (no such luck) . So the shopping continued though the holidays were technically over, lol! Tonight Dottie's doing the 2nd round of returns on my mother's clothes, then all we have left is finding a jacket for Talia, as the 6 I bought her was too short (growth spurt!) and they didn't have it in a larger size.

I would have never dreamed when I thought we were so far ahead this year that this would still be going on!

:o)

Time for some coffee and to finish waking up!

alan

5 comments:

JLee said...

Alan, my mom used to do the same thing with the slides! lol HOURS later...haha Hope you had a great holiday :)

Dr. Deb said...

My mom too, lol!

Kranki said...

It does all seem like a dream, doesn't it?

Happy New Year to you and yours!

jl said...

a.
thank-you for your words...

the slides/photography...reminds me of the power of a photograph to bring us back to a moment...that's a holiday tradition definitely worth keeping alive...i am thinking that it helps ground us in our sense of family, and in a world where it is so easy to feel aliented, that's a good grounding to have....
j.

robin andrea said...

I like the photo/slide thing at the holidays. Sounds like a wonderful idea, and certainly a tradition to keep. My parents used to do 8mm movies of the kids when we were little. We loved watching them, and I wish I had them now.