A Christmas Story

Barb felt that, since being in Florida for Christmas was the best present we could ask for, we didn't need to exchange presents this year. Instead, we needed to develop new simpler Christmas traditions.

This plan did not go over well with our daughter Sarah, who was visiting us for Christmas. She wanted lots of presents and wanted to continue all of our family traditions.

She was very convincing. Barb bought her lots of candy for her socking.  Sarah didn't have enough room in her suitcase to take any presents home with her. So Sarah had to open her socking presents and eat a little candy each day. This way she would have it all eaten by the time she was planning to return to Canada on December 27^th.

Barb also got her way. We started a new Christmas tradition of going to the beach with Daphne and Truman on Christmas day. Sarah had never been to the ocean. So she was happy to go.

Sarah convinced us to watch some Christmas movies in the evenings while she was here. I wasn't hard to convince since she wanted us to watch my favourite Christmas movie, Jean Shepard's A Christmas Story . Barb thinks the movie is silly but I think it is similar to my boyhood experiences.

I get a kick out of all the funny stories in the movie. Especially, the one when the father gets a major award in the mail. It turns out to be a lamp shaped like Marilyn Monroe's leg in a net stocking with a lamp shade that looks like a fringed mini-skirt.

After watching the movie and seeing me laughing about the leg lamp, Barb and Sarah found that leg lamps were selling at the local drugstore. They wanted to buy me one for Christmas. I didn't want them to waste money on such a frivolous present.

They got leg lamp anyway and gave it to me as a Christmas present. It turned out to be kind of neat. Sarah put took of a picture of me holding it up after I had it assembled. I put the picture up as my Facebook profile.

I now have a lovely leg lamp in our Florida room that Barb turns on every night. I get to look at it all evening from my comfy chair in the livingroom. I am sure the neighbours are very jealous.