Sights and sounds of a family Christmas

Our "official'' family Christmas was smaller this year than in most years past, with only a couple of my siblings and their extended families joining Mom and I out at the farm this year.

But it still offered a bevy of delightful memories.

Jameson, my 3-year-old great-nephew, was convinced every present under the tree had his name on it.

"I hope he has help distributing the presents, or they'll all end up in the same place," I told my goddaughter Rachel as we waited for everyone to settle in for the opening of gifts on Saturday afternoon.

The presents duly distributed, I did what I do every Christmas: sat back and watched everyone else open their presents.

"Dinosaurs! I got dinosaurs!" Jameson shouted, holding up an Allosaurus and Stegosaurus, battery powered beasts that roar and have movable legs.

He was also thrilled with the dinosaur movies he got for Christmas, and I'm sure they're the first thing he watched once he got home. The homemade pajamas? Um, not so much. But they sure looked like they'll keep him nice and warm the rest of this winter, and a few winters still to come.

I could relate to his enthusiasm about dinosaurs, though. I was fascinated by them as a boy, too...and that interest didn't wane even into adulthood. When my girlfriend, Karla, and I went to Salt Lake City to visit her sister, I figured out a way to swing by the Dinosaur National Monument on the way back, pestering the curators with questions as closing time bore down on us.

Gillian, at 7 months old the newest member of our family, was most fascinated by the wrapping paper her presents came in. Oh, and that other baby she kept seeing...in the mirror she was given as a gift. Darned if that other baby didn't look just like her! She also is the spitting image of her mother, my niece Stacey, at the same age.

I don't remember Stacey chatting as much as Gillian does. Gillian just loves to talk, even if it's still baby babble and no intelligible words have formed yet. It makes me smile, because it's a sure sign she's content.

When I was little, we saved Christmas wrapping paper as if it were made of money - no surprise, really, when you consider my parents were stretching their dollars as tightly as they could so they could keep eight kids clothed and fed. Later on, as more of us left the nest, they didn't feel the need to be as cautious --- so the grand finale of our gift exchange was usually a blizzard of "snowballs" made from the remnants of the wrapping paper. This year's version was merely a few flurries.

We didn't take our usual walk along the farm paths and fields after the big holiday feast - perhaps because it was so cold and windy out and also because a couple of my siblings were eager to dive into a round of Nertz. That card game, sort of like solitaire on steroids, has been a family passion ever since I was little. We usually pair up in teams of two, though one person can handle both duties - the pile of 13 cards and the main pile from which the player turns over three cards at a time just as in solitaire. I think we played until supper time, losing track of the score along the way. Mom was right in the middle of it, which was probably the best part of all.

After supper, I set up Mom's new Netflix account, a modest gift from her children that will allow her the joy of seeing movies from decades past that she always wanted to but never did because she was too busy raising a bushel-basket full of kids and there never seemed to be money around to catch those films in the theater.

She'd be the first to say, however, that the presents which mean the most to her are the presence.....of her large and often boisterous family.

I can only second that emotion.