Brad N.
12-21-2008, 09:34 PM
And Christmas isn't for a few days yet!
So yeah, Friday started off well. Took the boys to see Santa at the mall:
http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f50/bnasty316/Santa.jpg
Then later that night I got the chance to take out my "little" brother Jim (little by age only, the fucker is 6'8" tall and weighs 350 lbs) out for beers now that he's finally finished college. Got his 4 year degree in Broadcast journalism, was pretty bummed about being done with football after playing since 3rd grade. Great kid who has already accomplished an incredible amount and let slip his master plan to run for public office in 10 years. YES! I've always dreamed of being his Billy Carter or Roger Clinton. :)
Saturday we did Christmas with my Dad's family over at my sister's house. For 20 years now, ever since Dad got remarried we do this thing the weekend before X-mas. This year was a little emotional. You see, after I got laid off almost a year ago things were tight. I had to swallow my pride and take out a loan from my Father and while I'm finally getting things back to the comfortable level they once were (tougher in this economy, natch) I haven't been able to pay the man back yet. We owe him and his wife $1200 and it's been weighing me down for a while. Well, the big gift my Pop gave my wife and I for X-mas was to wipe that out, we don't owe them a dime. By the way, they did this for all of us kids since this year we have all borrowed money from them. Needless to say I was floored.
Then the next gift all of us kids was a DVD. More than an hour or old home movies set to music and edited together. Now, to be honest I thought these movies were gone, lost YEARS ago. In fact I'd asked about them a few years ago and my Mom didn't know where they were or even if she had them. When we were kids we used to bust out the old Super 8 camera all the time and I remembered watching them with a projector when I was little but I guess I just figured they were gone. Apparently my Mom found them this summer and had my Dad and Step-Mom take them and send them in to Kodak to get cleaned up and spliced together and transferred to DVD (complete with hot elevator tunes!) and each of us got a copy.
They put the damn thing on at my Sister's last night and there wasn't a dry eye in the house. Going all the way back to Christmas 1978 (when I was all of 2) and seeing my uncle Mike who was murdered just a month later there, to all of my other now dead relatives was hard but seeing all the other stuff and how young my parents were really hit me. Being a Dad myself now with two boys I saw a lot of myself there. Good stuff.
Then today I finished all the shopping for the big day. FINALLY! Ugh, come on two day work week!!!
So yeah, Friday started off well. Took the boys to see Santa at the mall:
http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f50/bnasty316/Santa.jpg
Then later that night I got the chance to take out my "little" brother Jim (little by age only, the fucker is 6'8" tall and weighs 350 lbs) out for beers now that he's finally finished college. Got his 4 year degree in Broadcast journalism, was pretty bummed about being done with football after playing since 3rd grade. Great kid who has already accomplished an incredible amount and let slip his master plan to run for public office in 10 years. YES! I've always dreamed of being his Billy Carter or Roger Clinton. :)
Saturday we did Christmas with my Dad's family over at my sister's house. For 20 years now, ever since Dad got remarried we do this thing the weekend before X-mas. This year was a little emotional. You see, after I got laid off almost a year ago things were tight. I had to swallow my pride and take out a loan from my Father and while I'm finally getting things back to the comfortable level they once were (tougher in this economy, natch) I haven't been able to pay the man back yet. We owe him and his wife $1200 and it's been weighing me down for a while. Well, the big gift my Pop gave my wife and I for X-mas was to wipe that out, we don't owe them a dime. By the way, they did this for all of us kids since this year we have all borrowed money from them. Needless to say I was floored.
Then the next gift all of us kids was a DVD. More than an hour or old home movies set to music and edited together. Now, to be honest I thought these movies were gone, lost YEARS ago. In fact I'd asked about them a few years ago and my Mom didn't know where they were or even if she had them. When we were kids we used to bust out the old Super 8 camera all the time and I remembered watching them with a projector when I was little but I guess I just figured they were gone. Apparently my Mom found them this summer and had my Dad and Step-Mom take them and send them in to Kodak to get cleaned up and spliced together and transferred to DVD (complete with hot elevator tunes!) and each of us got a copy.
They put the damn thing on at my Sister's last night and there wasn't a dry eye in the house. Going all the way back to Christmas 1978 (when I was all of 2) and seeing my uncle Mike who was murdered just a month later there, to all of my other now dead relatives was hard but seeing all the other stuff and how young my parents were really hit me. Being a Dad myself now with two boys I saw a lot of myself there. Good stuff.
Then today I finished all the shopping for the big day. FINALLY! Ugh, come on two day work week!!!