Piles o'Loot

  There are a couple of piles stacking up in a spare bedroom of loot, one for me and one for my wife. There is even a small pile of a few things for the cats. Looking at it all there is quite a bit there. It starts each year with deciding which big present to get each other and then expands from there. Over time we both just buy small things in the run up to Christmas and then relatives start buying us things. In the weeks leading up the piles just get bigger and bigger. Right now it is almost enough to cover a bed if you laid everything out and even stacked as they are it still covers a fair chunk of it. Not a bad haul for someone who used to get maybe a dozen small things from parents and 3 sets of aunts and uncles and 2 sets of grandparents. Nowadays my wife and I get each other far more than we used to get. I suspect there is even more we would like to get each other but they would just be big expensive things that we can get any time of year.

  I think back to those old Christmases I had when I was a child and I can barely remember any of them. I can remember a few nice presents I got but rarely anything about the actual days. The odd memory from my teenage years when we would always go to one relative or another for one of the Christmas or Boxing day meals but other than that not much really. Nothing specific at least. Vague memories of what we would do and eat. Getting in to the time with my wife I can obviously remember more it being more recent and all of those have involved present opening, a big dinner which we both scoff down with surprising speed (it really is that good) and then time together playing with whatever we got that year.

  Less than a week now until we can do that all again. The ripping open presents, the moving cats of piles of wrapping paper they are trying to play with, the cooking and eating, the lazing about enjoying the day, the tea made from dinner leftovers and other stuff and finally one last big flop down stuffed to the gills after enjoying the day.

  Hmm, here's an idea. Why don't we do that every week :) .