Holidays with Kim

 Thanksgiving, and most especially Christmas were very busy for us because Kim usually had a great agenda for the Holidays.  Christmas was always the big event, but Thanksgiving was the prep holiday where we would shakedown the house, and clean everything, and then some.

 Here on Christmas Eve, 2009 we see Kim, Barney, and Dusty waiting for Santa to arrive.  Notice Kim reading the paper.  This is at a time when Kim would sit in the living room, by the fire, and read the paper.  Over time she found the couch to be uncomfortable, and didn't want to sit on it any longer.  Eventually she asked if we could install a fire place in the bedroom.

Later that night we got  a rare Christmas snow fall.  Christmas snow is very rare in north Texas.

The anticipation of guests in the house would send Kim on a panicked cleaning spree, and the holidays amplified that effect dramatically.  In 1997 when we started hosting Thanksgiving we really didn't know much about it.  But, you know, after a few years we started preparing for Thanksgiving a month or more ahead of time.  Eventually the preparations included constructions.

There are details in these photos that I could never have noticed in that day.  In this Thanksgiving 2023 picture Kim was wearing jeans.  I didn't notice that on that day, LOL.  Like I said Kim and I were very busy leading into the holidays, and there is a million things to do on Thanksgiving.

Another Holiday tradition is forcing the dog to pose for a Holiday picture.  At one time we did Christmas Cards, and those were relatively easy.  Then we tried a photo Christmas Card for a while with Harley, and us, and well that never seemed to work well.  I guess it was fun, LOL.

Usually we were at Sam, and Cherri's House for Christmas Morning.  The BIG Event, after which we all have a collective sigh of relief.  Everyone is there in this picture, and I am working the camera.  There were a lot of cameras.
 

There were always new things to play with at the end of Christmas Day, and Kim usually wanted to play too.  The date on the picture is 2009, and Wii was a new thing.  I think she is wearing her new boots too.  You can also see Sam, and Barbara in the foreground wondering what Kim is doing to the TV.

Have I mentioned getting the Dogs to pose for Christmas Photos?  Poor Dusty, she looks like she's fixin' to bite me.  But this was a consistent thing, and the Dogs tolerated it because they got treats afterward.

I found more Christmas pictures from antiquity, and this one is from the 1960's.  Betty, and a fresh Christmas Tree maybe in 1969?  

Kim really loved Christmas because of the kids.  She was always inquisitive about what they wanted, and then careful about finding the right gifts.  I was an intense, month long process finding everyone that thing they needed or wanted.  She definitely put too much time into it, and generally too much money too, but again it was something she liked to do, and was fun, and maybe a little stressful too.

Kim was also right in the middle of all the unwrapping also.  The magic moments of making the biggest mess of the year.  All in good fun...

After Thanksgiving we would watch the Cowboys, and that was a solid tradition, every year.  There was always a lot of activity but everyone had one eye on the TV.  Then late in the afternoon we both would be in bed to watch the end of the game.  That was our special time, end of the day, lounging around, watching the TV, and talking about the trivia of the day.

Over the last few years Kim would ask for Lottery Tickets for Christmas.  This was one of Kim's pastimes over the last 5 or so years.  She had considerable luck with scratchers.  We had played the number games periodically for a long time, and never won more than like $30.  But the scratchers were different, and she would regularly win as much as 50% of what we paid.  No we never got ahead of that, but Kim did have fun with it.

Over the years we threw fewer parties, but the Holidays were different.  And we always had an extended agenda for the Holidays that started in August or September.  So it didn't help when Hallmark started running Christmas Movies in July.  But, that became another one of our special times, watching Christmas Movies in July.  Its like Comfort TV, LOL!

This was Christmas in 2000.  The Y2K things had all the Tech People wired for Doomsday, and Kim was fixated on Christmas.  This is a kinda vague in my memory now, but I remember being surprised at her level of Christmas.

  Kim and London center stage.

This is Kim on 1998 with Lizzie, Dusty puppy, Barney, and Tori, I think, black poodle.
 

Then this is the Densmores at Christmas, is this why Kim likes Christmas?