We went back to Brent and Suzy’s house for Christmas morning and had another delicious meal, including chocolate peppermint pancakes. We then opened some presents. The hit was an insulated rolling bag Rosemary and Gary gave us for picnics and hikes. It was a hit because Toren decided it was his and he was ready to go. He pushed it to Brent and Suzy’s front door, opened the door, pushed it down the stairs, then down the walkway, then down the driveway and into the street, then about 200 feet down the street. It was cold but there was no snow at this point. I let him go to see how far he was going to go with the bag. Eventually he jack-knifed it and fell (scraping his thumbs in the process), or he would probably still be pushing the bag down the streets of South Jordan, UT. Despite the fall, he still likes the bag. Here he is trying to pull it up the stairs at Debi’s parents’ house a few days later:
After breakfast, we headed up to Morgan to see my family. Apparently my parents host most of their kids for breakfast then spend the rest of the day traveling from house to house to see their kids and grandkids. We missed the breakfast, but got there in time to start visiting homes. We started at my brother Mike’s house, then went to Tammy’s, then Josh’s, then Danny’s, then Troy’s. It was a lot of fun to see everyone and catch up with them. I learned that Mike and Kristen had recently gone to Spain (no one tells me these things) and found out that my sister Tammy is now the “big boss” in Morgan (she is a clerk for the courts, but apparently that makes her nearly omnipotent in Morgan). Josh’s daughter, Addy, hadn’t had a chance to open her gifts yet, and she didn’t seem interested. So Toren helped – he tore open almost all of Addy’s gifts. He might have played with some of the toys, but really he just got into opening gifts. Josh’s gift to himself – a bullet proof vest. That prompted me to ask to see his assault rifle, which we promptly put in Toren’s hands just to freak Debi out:
From Josh’s it was on to deep intellectual discussion at Danny’s, where we also had a great dinner. Our light Christmas discussion touched on topics like: the impending replacement of the US the leading world power in light of the greater intellectual strivings of people in China and India due to their greater motivation to succeed. That came up as we were discussing parenting practices. From Danny’s we stopped at Troy’s where I helped him hook up his computer to his TV, though we didn’t work out all the kinks (Windows 7 sucks!), but got a passable connection working. We then dropped my parents off up in Morgan and drove back to Debi’s parents’ house in West Jordan where we spent the night.
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