more childhood christmas memories.

When i was a little my dad parents lived in PA. So for the first 6 years of my life our Christmas was spent traveling to PA. Now i know many of you think traveling during Christmas is awful, and that Christmas morning should be spent at home. But as a little kid it was exciting it was an adventure and it was just all out fun to go to grandma's house.
Our game plan back then for Christmas was to have our Christmas gathering with my moms family on Christmas eve and as soon as that was over we would hit the road, us kids would sleep the whole way there(after looking to see if we could see Santa flying though the sky) and mom and dad would carry us into our beds at my grandma's house in PA once we got there. In the morning we would wake up to total magic of not only gifts under the tree from Santa but also getting to see Grandma and Grandpa. Not just your old run of the mile grandma and grandpa either these were the ones who eat, drank and breathed for us grandkids. You see on my dad side of the family Me, My sister and My brother are it for grandkids and my grandma and grandpa LOVED just LOVED being grandparents.. I would dear say everything they have done since the day i was born(me being the oldest grandchild) has been for us grandkids. Yes I know I'm just a little spoiled by them ;) They are both still alive and live 5 minutes from me and still LOVE and Live to spoil the grandkids, ONLY now the grandkids are the Great Grandkids there are my 4 and my sister 2 and I think they might get spoiled more then the grandkids did :) Mr Man and Sweet Pea are over there right now spending the night.
OK what was my point LOL..
Oh yes.. we would wake up Christmas morning and open our gifts and such and then spend the rest of the week with them and come back home on New years day.. True i was just a little thing back then but I always thought it was the greatest.

Christmas 1974 was really the 1st Christmas I can say I have memories from, I seen pics of my 1st and 2nd Christmas but I don't really remember it, not like I did this on. I had just turned 2 years old about a month before Christmas and just days before my birthday I became a big sister, so having a baby sister was a wonderful Christmas gift.

This year we also didn't do a Christmas eve gathering at my moms parents we did it a few days before i showed pics of that in the post Edit to my holiday meme
So this Christmas we were in PA, for Christmas eve also and we went to Grandpa's church for the Christmas eve service. You know i don't recall if I ever mentioned that my Grandpa is a Baptist Pastor here on my blog or not. Anyways if now well now ya know.(for that matter he is the Pastor of the church we attend now) The picture above was taken after church that Christmas eve.

Stuff i remember from that Christmas is thinking Grandma had the biggest tree i ever saw in my life, and I remember coming home from church Christmas eve and wondering why Santa hadn't come yet. Grandpa likes to tell that story. Of me running into the house and bending over where all he could see was my little baby bottom sticking up in the air looking under the tree and saying "nope not yet"
The picture above is me and my sister under grandma's tree.

These next pictures are from the next year 1975
They were taken Christmas morning.

I was 3 years old and my sister was 1

One think i remember from this trip is that i had a pretty fur like coat with matching hat and oh what are they called some sort of muff purse like thing to put my hands into. I also got a wagon, and sometime during that trip I was being pulled in my wagon I thought It was down a sidewalk on the way to my very 1st movie at a movie theater, but when i shared that memory with grandma a few years back she told me I must be wrong, i got a wagon and she did pull me down the side walk in it but we drove to the theater to see the movie. (yeah way to mess with my perfect Christmas memory of being all dressed up in a fancy coat being pulled in a wagon to go to the movies LOL) The move we saw that year was Disney's Snow White, I remember it all, and really remember being scared out of my mind at the witch when she was in her black outfit not as the little old lady

Here is a picture that wasn't Christmas morning but still was from that visit I remember thinking that day that Grandma, me and my new baby doll all had matching shirts on LOL, well I guess they were close enough for my little 3 year old mind to thing they were matching. I also remember my baby, don't remember what i named her or what she was called but I got her that year for Christmas and she did somersaults and cartwheels, My sister got a baby doll also but all it did was pee when you feed it a bottle of water LOL.

We continued driving to PA every Christmas and spending the week with Grandma until They moved 30 minuts from where we lived when i was in Kindergarden.. It was wonderful having them so close to us, but I also sort of missed spending the whole week after Christmas with them. Now i live 5 minutes from them and see them pretty much ever day.

After Grandma and Grandpa moved close to us, our family Christmas tradition changed. We started doing every other Christmas with them. One year we would do Christmas eve with my moms family and Christmas day with my dads and the next year we flipped flopped that and spend Christmas eve with my dads and Christmas day with my moms
I continued to do that until Christmas 1994, That was the year I got married.. and we changed traditions again.. but I'll post about that later.