Jeff and Kallie

(Grandpa Wilkins clearly loves Christmas) :)

(Mom, Chelsea and I)

As a kid, I remember going to my Grandma and Grandpa Johnson's house on Christmas Eve. There was no kid's table in our family...we sat on a sheet in my Grandma's room and even though we were on the floor, the grown-ups let us have Grandma's homemade grapejuice with our dinner...mmmm. We didn't seem to care that our parents were in the other room at a table. We loved playing with our cousins, and would rather have been with them than with the boring adults. A few Christmases we went caroling. I remember caroling to my Grandma and Grandpa's neighbors, the Kartchners. I remember that my Grandma always had yummy hard candy for us. The few times when there was enough snow, our uncles would take us outside to play. I remember once, we built two forts and had a giant snowball fight. Chelsea got hit in the face by a snowball thrown by Uncle Tim because she peeked her head over our fort at just the right time. Looking back, I'm sure that snowball fight was between my uncles and the other big boys, but they we sure had fun thinking they were out to get us!

On the way home from Grandma's house, we looked at Christmas lights. When you saw some that no one else saw, you had to yell, "Christmas Lights!!!" In our kid minds, you got a point for seeing the lights first, and we were serious about the competition. I don't know about the other kids, but I spent some of that time looking for Santa too.

Christmas Eve is the only night my parents could convince us to go to bed early. They could have sent us to our rooms at 5, and I'm sure we would have gone, because they told us if we were awake that Santa would pass by our house. I remember laying in bed and trying so hard to go to sleep. My eyes saw a flying sleigh in every shadow and my ears heard jingling bells and ho ho ho's. It was so hard to sleep on Christmas Eve.

Waking up on Christmas morning was the funnest thing. We would wake up dying to see what Santa had left for us. My dad would tease us when we asked him if we could go see our presents. First he'd ask us if we'd brushed our hair. When we came back with brushed hair, he'd ask us if we'd brushed our teeth, so we'd run off to do that.

Then opening presents...what fun! First we'd divide them all out giving everyone all their presents. Then one at a time from youngest to oldest, we'd open them. A lot of times, Chelsea and I would have to open our presents at the same time, since we got the same things. Grandma Boyd's presents were always wrapped the prettiest in shiny paper and with beautiful bows. It was fun to have little brothers and sisters and to teach them how to open their presents. We were so excited for their presents.

Later on Christmas day, Grandma and Grandpa...or sometimes Grandma and Santa...would come over and bring a big box of oranges and grapefruit along with a bag of 'S' cookies for us. Chelsea, Tucker and I would eat the oranges every day. All we needed was a papertowel, which held the peel AND the "goldfish", which is what Tucker called the orange sections.

This year, we decided that Christmas is for kids, which is what we've always known. Chelsea, Tucker and I, following the example of my mom's brothers and sisters have decided not to exchange gifts. We'd much rather spend time together or go on a trip together in the spring or summer. Presents just don't mean as much to us anymore. My mom asked us not to get anything for her and my dad.

There's so much magic in this season for kids and this year has been so great already- shopping for all the kids in our family and focusing on them has changed things for me and brought the magic of Santa and Christmas lights and Christmas Eve with my cousins back for me.

For adults Christmas means more...it means deep feelings of gratitude for what the season means and for all the good things we see and do. It means doing things to make the people around us happy...especially the kids! It means spending time together and having a chance to catch up with brothers, sisters, parents, aunts, uncles and cousins.

I'm really excited for this Christmas and hope that it's as good for you as it has been for me so far!