Christmas Aftermath and Awe

It was a crazy couple of days with us entertaining my parents for Christmas Eve through Christmas morning then having the in-laws over for Christmas dinner after my folks left!  Lots of chopping, stirring, setting up, serving, and cleaning but we managed it all without incident.

Bubba and Matilda had a fantastic Christmas morning, waking up around 7am and scurrying down the stairs for their first look at what Santa unloaded for them.  Both enjoyed receiving new video games for the PS3 as well as their Nintendo DSi's and some clothes, books, CDs, and other little tidbits of quick-to-be-forgotten entertainment. 

It struck me funny that with all of the new items received, Bubs chose to spend the first few hours of post-Christmas glee up in his room, sitting at his computer, with a software program my father brought over to show him.  It's some kind of space software, allowing him to observe the stars and visit distant galaxies, fascinating him with the beauty of nebulas and spiral intersecting galaxies and other such space oddities.

We are most certainly a family of computer nerds.  We all got new games and couldn't wait to load them up and get started.  Matilda received an Eye-Pet for the PS3: some sort of interactive pet that she can actually play with on the television screen.  Daddy got a first-person shooter (I can hear the sound of automatic machine gun fire coming from upstairs as I type) and I got a mystery game called Art of Murder: Hunt for the Puppeteer.  Creepy good fun. 

I've played this type of game since early Zork days, all the way through the King's Quest and Leisure Suit Larry series.  As I was intent on solving a small portion of the mystery this afternoon, Bubba comes up next to me and observes for a bit, then says quite matter of factly, "I've never liked the way these games taste."  Just a small reminder that I get every now and then that he experiences some degree of synesthesia. 

What a lovely Christmas we all had, aside from the gifts, just being together.  Enjoying time with my parents and my in-laws, experiencing the childhood joy once again on my children's faces.  Remembering that God gave his Son as the greatest gift to the world and that He also gave me the gift of my son and daughter.  What an amazing God we serve.