You can blame the Lipstick Chronicles and Harley’s last post for my blog tonight.  It made me remember the things Dear Hubby and I used to do during the Christmas holidays.

     We didn’t have children.  However, we did celebrate Christmas in our own way.  Each year we’d buy toys and drop them in the Toys for Tots bin.  (We still do that.)  We’d put up a Christmas tree, decorate the house, and I’d bake cookies and fancy breads.  Our neighbors would bring their children’s gifts to our house.  We marked each household’s gifts and stored them in the attic.

     Every Christmas Eve we’d go to one neighbor’s house for a small party.  (We were their second child’s Godparents.)  Around nine we’d go home.  They’d put their two daughters to bed and wait for us to return with Santa’s gifts.  For the next couple of hours, Dear Hubby and I would run up and down the street delivering Santa’s gifts to the other neighbors.  Our last stop would be back at our Goddaughter’s.  Usually, her mother and I assembled the toys well before Christmas Eve.   However, on occasion, DH and I were the elves who put them together Christmas Eve.

     When our Goddaughter hit the Barbie doll and bicycle age, we in some way turned into the elf assembly team and Dear Hubby and I put together the Barbie townhouse-a flimsy affair.  We then carried it three doors down the street in ten mph winds and snow.  Upon arrival inside our friend’s home, we all sat down with a bottle of wine and spent another hour rebuilding it. 

     The next year we had the construction of Barbie’s car and the application of gazillions of stickers to it.  These stickers were so teensy that they required an electron microscope, tweezers, and the hands of a surgeon to apply them. 

     In the year of the bicycle, our Goddaughter’s father and DH spent two days putting it together.  I hadn’t heard language like that since I’d worked construction. 

      Late at night, every Christmas Eve after all the gifts were distributed, I put small strings of sleigh bells on my dogs and walked them for several blocks.  The dogs loved the walks and I think they got a kick out of the bells because they sure would make certain they jingled a lot.