Friday, December 20, 2013

Christmas is a time to make new memories and remember the old

I have a few Christmas memories that I absolutely love remembering this time of year. I have bad memories, which I have written about in this blog but today I am focusing on my favorite ones.

My earliest Christmas memory is from around the age of 5 or 6. My parents had me and my brother with them while they went to the toy store to pick up a few things, and this was back when they would gift wrap everything for you. They come out to the van with this HUGE already wrapped present and I just knew that it was for me. Every time I would ask if it was mine or try to touch it my dad would say "Touch it and I make you watch homeless kids play with it." That only made me want to see what it was more, but I didn't want to watch other kids playing with it so I left it alone. Christmas morning, at around 4am, me and my brother get up while our parents were still sleeping like the dead and rip open every single damn present under the tree. The giant present was one of those big fisher price kitchens, which of course made our freaking day! So, at 4am my brother and I drag this thing down the hall, into our parents room, start screaming for them to look what Santa brought us and shove this kitchen thing on the bed, on top of our dad. Then we ran back to the living room to pile our arms up with everything else and throw those on top of our parents as well. Needless to say.. we got in trouble if we didn't wait till they woke up for Christmases following that one.

My next memory is every Christmas Eve we got to open one present before we went to bed. This satisfied us until we were 8 and 9, then we started begging to open everything under the tree before we went to bed. After a while our parents finally agreed but told us that if we were so impatient to open presents they would make sure that Santa brought us nothing to open the next morning. We were totally fine with that since we had no patience and wanted everything as soon as we saw them under the tree.
Also, around this time my brother and I had learned the main 2 spots our mom would hide presents and while our dad was at work and our mom was asleep on the couch we would go through those spots and count how many presents we had gotten. I had also mastered the art of opening the presents to look at them and wrapping them back up like they had never been touched. Of course, my dad caught on real quick but my mom took a little while longer. I did that until I was around 19. Pathetic I know.

Around 10 and 11 we started opening all our presents on Christmas eve and had nothing to open Christmas morning so everyone could sleep in. This didn't bother my brother and I because that meant we could still wake up early and play with our new presents. Every year my dad would get a 'family' gift or a big gift my brother and I would share, which back in the 90s was Nintendo stuff so we would play Mario or compete in driving games the entire next day.

When my brother and I were in middle school we woke up Christmas morning knowing there was nothing under the tree and our parents would be awake, because we were teenagers we needed sooo much more sleep lol. We go out to the living room and our mom is in the kitchen making breakfast and we see the tree. There are a good 30 more presents under the tree. My brother and I look at each other, back at the tree, back at each other, and scream "OH MY GOD!!!!" then hear our mom laughing in the kitchen. They decided to surprise us with more presents to open Christmas morning.

My absolute favorite Christmas memory is from when I was around 16. My best friend and I decided we would cut down a baby tree from the yard our apartment building was on. I get our super dull ax out and we walk out to the property line. We found the perfect 4ft tall tree and proceed to chop it down. As we are dragging the tree back to my apartment my friend notices something on the tree. We stop walking so he can find out what he is looking at. It is an old wasps nest. It's the middle of December, the nest was long dead, but my friend started screaming like a wasp was going to come out and murder us. He then starts running around the yard to find a stick, comes back to the tree and starts beating the ever loving shit out of the tree. He is still screaming the entire time he is doing this and it is taking everything I have not to piss myself while I laugh at what I am seeing. He hates it when I share this story, which makes me want to share it more.

Now, as a mother, I continue to make new memories watch Christmas happen through my childs eyes, but these are a few of my "pre mommy" favorite memories. Hope you enjoyed.

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