Of course, all is not always so serious and murderously paranoid here at Casa de Caza. We held our whole Christmas a day early this year. We’re always a little flexible about it anyway, but this year, their father decided to stick it to me and take them for both days to make up for the once-in-a-lifetime special trip over Christmas last year.

Whatever, dude. You can’t get to me that easily, since we’ve been known to throw our main bash as early as the fourteenth if that suited us.

So last night was our Christmas Eve, and we always do the bulk of our present-opening on Christmas Eve. The kids were suitable worked up about it, and when Gramma and Grampa finally got here (at the perfectly reasonable hour of four o’clock, but there’s no such thing as reasonable to a kid when presents are involved), they could barely contain themselves.

Thirty-seven seconds later, and it was all over but the cleaning up.

Even the cat got into it. I wasn’t sure how he’d do, as he really hasn’t seen very many people in the house in his short life, but with unerring feline instinct, he made straight for the only non-cat-person in the room, and loved up on my father, even following him down the hall to the bathroom to make sure this new and wonderful person wasn’t going to abandon him to the heathens in the living room.

The dog got into the act, after having watched us through the window, convinced that we were all insane. He’s such a tolerant soul, but was so pleased with himself that he couldn’t hold still for a second take, and instead brought me his purple Christmas ball to please throw? Now?

Seamus was delighted with his digital camera, and once he got the hang of the shutter delay (which I had forgotten about; it’s amazing how fast I can get completely ruined by good equipment), he became an instant shutterbug. I thought a 1 gig memory card would be plenty, but now that I’ve seen him in action, I wouldn’t be too surprised to see him blow through that in a weekend. That’s OK; that’s the beauty of digital.

It’s fun to see the world through his eyes. There are a lot of fuzzy self portraits (I showed him the macro setting this morning) and a whole collection of things that he either felt were important objects to document or were just very artistic.

It’s even more fun when I control the portal to the Internet and can refrain from publishing some of the more unflattering photos of myself, generally with my mouth open. He’ll get the hang of it!

John really enjoyed his gifts too, and I think the whole holiday can be chalked up to ’successful’ now. And to cap it off, I now have a day and a half entirely to myself. I’m going to take myself down to the Air Museum after dark, take pictures of the planes, and then come home, pour myself a nice bourbon, and watch chick flicks by the fire. How relaxing does that sound?