Christmas Stockings

Though Mari and I took a Christmas-gift-giving holiday this year, Christmas gift-giving did not take a holiday from us. Much appreciated cards arrived from cousins Gary and Tracy and their families and they now have a magnetized home on our fridge (Emilio knows all of your names now) and in the weeks before the big day, our foyer filled up with an avalanche of gift boxes from Texas. Having Mari’s parents, Maria Rosa and Jaime, with us, was the best gift of all, and Santa filled everyone’s stocking (in the video above, Jaime and Maria Rosa explore theirs; Mari and I got matching wool radar caps).

The highlight of the day was Emilio’s first encounter with Santa’s bounty (check out the video on the Emilio Report), and the early highlight of Emilio’s stocking was the ThunderMaker (a cylinder with a metal coil attached). Later in the day, he enjoyed finishing his two new 48-piece Melissa & Doug wooden puzzles (The Rainforest and Horses). Santa brought Nina and Pablo a soft Audubon Society squirrel and robin to go with the soft hooting Owl he brought Emilio.

My first Christmas mission was to find an open grocery store that sold cornbread mix (our first batch didn’t rise like it was supposed to) and once I succeeded, preparation of the Christmas turkey and cornbread dressing continued. The menu also included Orange Whip, deviled eggs, 2 varieties of cranberry sauce, and apple sauce and cream potatoes prepared by Maria Rosa, who also carved the turkey. We sat down for our first round of eating while Emilio was enjoying his Christmas siesta. We spent the afternoon opening the presents Jaime and Maria Rosa brought with them from Spain, those which had arrived via mail, and those which Jack, Julie and Nathaniel dropped off when they made a surprise pre-lunch visit. The sum result of the gift-discovering orgy was an embarrassment of riches made more embarrassing when I later realized that I couldn’t recall who had given us some of the gifts. Chalk that up to frazzled father syndrome, for I am extremely grateful to all of you who went to such lengths to choose, buy and send or bring such thoughtful gifts to our family.

I have to give special shout out to Jack, Julie and Nathaniel for outfitting the three oldest members of the clan with Permian High School tees, featuring my old jersey number #12, and to John Dan, Michelle, Laura and John for helping me keep my hammer-and-sickle faith alive. Special thanks, too, to Gerardo for the Mapucha tapestry he sent us from Southern Chile and to Mom and Dad for pimping the ride they gave us with a 36-language GPS system, which will help get me to the Department of Motor Vehicles and learn Italian (but not, alas, Mapuche) in the process. The Little People Zoo Mom and Dad sent Emilio has been a big hit as has the Dora the Explorer bath toys sent by Brian, Lyndsae and Olivia and though it is an injustice to cut the list off there, I must because there are babes to bathe and, Emilio tells me, puzzles to work.