With Christmas nearly here and me not able to sleep I thought I would share a few memories I am working into a book I am writing with you.In the mid 1960's my sisters were living in a small appointment in the city. My one sister asked the other to wrap an empty box for her in a way so she could put the present in it later. My oldest sister was always the best wrapper in the family, and so she wrapped it and gave it back to our other sister. Christmas morning our oldest sister was not at all happy to see our other sister had put the blouse she bought her for Christmas inside the box the older sister has wrapped herself. In a very real sense she had wrapped her own present. lolOne of my favorite memories comes from when my little brother and I were really young. We had this pact if one of us woke up on Christmas or Easter we would wake the other one so we could go open our presents. Our father who was himself a big kid at heart, loved Christmas very much. He had grown up in the depression so they did not have much. He would kinda relive his child hood through us. On Christmas he loved to watch us open our gifts. We did not have much , but we had more then he did growing up. We always set the Christmas tree up Christmas eve. If my brother and I were not awake by 6 am you would hear my father whisper to us Janie, Roy, Santa Clause has been here. At that point we would both spring out of bed and run down the stairs. Before we hit the top of the steps we would hear our mother scream at him. FRANCIS LET THEM SLEEP ! Like we would be sleeping after she screamed at dad lol. We did not realize it then , but mom and our older sisters most likely had not been in bed long after setting everything up for us, and mom wanted to sleep a bit. Sleep is in short supply on Christmas morning when you are the mother of 5 children. Dad would just laugh and follow my brother and me down the stairs to the waiting tree with the presents under it. He did not even reply at all to mom being mad about having to get back up so soon on a cold December morning. Our upstairs did not have any direct heat source, but that is another story. If you would like to see a pic of dad and me the morning I got my tickle bee game, It is in the memory album. I tried to put it here, but the site would not let me do it. I kept getting this thing said something went wrong but would not tell me what.