[Today’s run: 3.2 miles with wife and dog]<\/p>\n
We finished up the Christmas shopping today. I enjoy buying presents.<\/p>\n
When I was a kid my siblings and I got an allowance for gift buying at Christmas time.\u00a0 I remember going to the old Woolworth’s store in Des Moines, and the JC Penney, and Younkers.\u00a0 I remember parking in the parking ramp that had an elevator…\u00a0 for the cars.\u00a0 We would have a few dollars for each grandparent, parent and sibling.\u00a0 We bought some interesting stuff, that’s for sure. It seems like I always got confused before the end of the process and I would purchase two things for one person.\u00a0 I would have to shuffle around the presents to cover everybody.\u00a0 (When you are buying screwdrivers for dad\/grandpas you can do that pretty easily.)\u00a0 I would think some particular thing was worthy of purchase, then I would have to figure out who to give it to.<\/p>\n
Later we would also go to the hobby store in Beaverdale or out to Hobby Haven in Sherwood Forest; and to the Merle Hay Mall when that was built.<\/p>\n
Most years we went to Jack Miller’s Tree Farm and got a Christmas Tree.\u00a0 Sometimes we put a few lights on the house, but\u00a0 not very many.\u00a0 A couple of years my dad put lights on his ham radio tower.\u00a0 You could see it for quite a distance.<\/p>\n
On Christmas morning we would open gifts at home.\u00a0 Then we would drive over to the paternal grandparent’s house and open gifts there.\u00a0 Then we would come back home and walk to my maternal grandparent’s house next door.<\/p>\n
There were more cousins on that side of the family so there was always a large crowd there.\u00a0 We would take turns opening gifts.\u00a0 Each person had a couple.\u00a0 There was a family “drawing” where each person had one name of some other person. So you would get something from your drawing gifter and something from Grandma.\u00a0 Then Grandma and Grandpa had a whole pile to work on; they got something from everybody.\u00a0 When that was all done we would eat turkey dinner.<\/p>\n
After dinner we would go home and examine the day’s loot and try to remember what we got from who.\u00a0 We might bring some of the cousins over home with us and show them our stuff or play with a new toy or game.<\/p>\n
Later in the day we might wander back over to have some leftover turkey or pie.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[Today’s run: 3.2 miles with wife and dog] We finished up the Christmas shopping today. I enjoy buying presents. When I was a kid my siblings and I got an allowance for gift buying at Christmas time.\u00a0 I remember going to the old Woolworth’s store in Des Moines, and the JC Penney, and Younkers.\u00a0 I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1905"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1909,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1905\/revisions\/1909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}