Christmas Keepers

A few years back, our family (meaning, me) started a tradition of decorating a gingerbread house on Christmas day.  I was hoping this activity would redirect the focus a bit away from all the presents and gifting and materialism.   I figured it would be good to move the focus of the day a bit toward things that are healthier . . . like sugar.  And more sugar. 

And Godzilla on the roof.   Tossing gingerbread people to their death.

Well, so that seems to have worked!  Check one thing off my list.

Doesn't Godzilla look ominous with these shadows?

Here's another surprising win.   Years ago, I decided to pull together fancy shoebox-sized containers to hold my kid's special memory stuff.   A single shoebox holds an *amazing* amount of stuff!  And it doesn't take a up a lot of space.

But a multi-child pile of boxes does take up *some* space, and so in my ongoing effort to pare down our belongings for a future downsizing, I decided to give my kids these boxes now.   The kids are all legally adult, and they're almost all out of the house -- only N-son still has a foot in the door.   I also brought down a box of photos. 

Well, this was an AMAZING trove of memories.   The photos, especially, captivated my offspring, who started up a game of "Then and Now".   As in . . .

THEN

and

NOW.

It was hilarious.  And we're collecting these Then/Now photos to make a family calendar next year. 

I really love that my kids finally got into these photos, because frankly I've been trying to unload them for a while now.  I'm not a huge photo person myself -- if you look at the photographs I take, you'd probably think my favorite kid is a quart-sized canning jar.    But these pairings were just so funny. 

Want another?  Okay, here:
  


These sure are Christmas keepers!