Some pretty incredible memories looking back, making memories going forward.

 "Just Thinking"

We made it through another Christmas, I had a thought that Christmas Day reminds me a lot of Thanksgiving dinner. There are lots of preparations that take forever to complete, then it is over in a flash. Christmas this year was quite different for us, Chris worked both Christmas eve and Christmas day, Charlie was out of town celebrating with his fiancé’s family, Mom is with siter Carolyn’s family in Nevada and Dad has been gone 5 years now. We were all able to get together and celebrate our Christmas last night and had a great time.

During this quiet Christmas, I couldn’t help but reflect on the chaotic Christmases of years gone by. Some timeless memories of when the kids were young, staying too long celebrating with friends on Christmas Eve, getting home late, putting exhausted kids to bed, with thoughts of sugar plumbs dancing in their head, Next was operation Santa, assembling toys, wrapping presents and transforming the front room into a magical wonderland, proving that they were all on Santa’s nice list. Christmas morning started with the all too early wake up from excited kids then the ensuing mayhem as presents were torn open, wrapping paper and boxes discarded in rapid succession to see the bounty that they held. As the anarchy settled and the boys were trying out their favorite new toys, Mom whipped out a special Christmas morning breakfast while I did a minor clean up, followed by a quick nap. Midafternoon, start getting everyone dressed in their Christmas finest, gather up the family presents and packing up hors d’oeuvres for the trek to San Francisco to celebrate Christmas at Mom and Dad’s House where siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins converged for Christmas dinner. After dinner, full and satiated, Dad would don his Santa hat and orchestrate the present exchange, with the grandkids acting as an elf delivery system. Following the opening of gifts, the craziness began with a wrapping paper fight with Mom and some of the older aunts getting caught in the crossfire, the foil wrapping was highly sought after as it made the best projectiles. Total crazy times, but lots of fun and some wonderful memories.

This year we bough a live tree for the first time in several years, we have a couple of artificial trees, not the aluminum tree advocated for by Lucy in "A Charlie Brown Christmas", that are really pretty and once loaded with ornaments are hard to tell the difference between real and fake tree. But there is something about Christmas traditions and buying a real tree, picking it out, setting up the stand, turning it to get the best side facing forward, it was fun to do it again. When we were young, getting the Christmas tree was a family adventure. We would go to several lots looking for just the right tree. First the tree lot on Silver Ave., then the lot on Alamany, over to John Daly Blvd. next stop Tanforan, often times doubling back to the first lot, because the first tree that we saw was OK, but wasn’t full enough. Dad would talk the tree guy into some extra limbs, when we got home, he would drill some holes in the trunk to insert more limbs to fill it out and make it even. Later on, we started getting the trees flocked and would alternate between green and flocked tree. The flocked trees would get white lights and gold tinsel and ornaments, and the green tree would get colored lights and ornaments.

Later after we were all moved out Dad’s modifications to the tree escalated, he would cut a section out of the middle of the tree, he had built a special train track that attached to the tree, he ran his Christmas train ran on that track. He built a large platform for the tree to stand on, that he set up his regular train, with all of his outbuildings and features. It was all pretty incredible.

Some pretty incredible memories looking back, making memories going forward.

Let me know what you think.

@ChuckBarberini - #ChuckBarberiniRealEstate - @ChuckBarberiniRealEstate

@Golden_State_Guide_Service - @Citizen.Number.One