Maybe Monday - Some Christmas Memories

Christmas Carols reminds me of the part of my life growing up in a very small town in my home country.  We have a great group of friends who have know each other since were 5 or 6 years old.  One of the tradition that we do as a group was to go caroling in order to collect funds for our annual Christmas party.  My contribution was to play my guitar to accompany the group.  We would practice a couple of nights and choose our songs and make decisions who will sing some of the solo part.  One particular night, from one home to another, a couple of my friends had a bit of a heated discussion as to what song we were suppose to do next.  The battle was between I BELIEVE or GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN.  To this day, whenever we reconnect with our childhood friends, this story is always brought back because it was something no one could forget.  After we have done 2 or 3 nights and have collected sufficient funds for our party, then we have a short meeting to plan for our annual party.  The day was December 23rd.  Everyone has a task to complete which makes a successful Christmas party.  According to one of my friend who now lives in Daly City, the group still celebrates the tradition but I believe they don't go caroling.  I am guessing they don't need the money for the party.

Maybe Monday - More Memories

It feels like the weekend came and went. Instead of having Gamble sleepover on Friday, we picked him up on Saturday around 1130 am.  Before lunch we decided to go for a drive downtown Morgan Hill and stopped by Ross.  We bought him a new outfit and of course a new toy.  He was very good in accepting the fact that he can only pick one toy.  He is a smart boy and picked up one toy but a big toy.  It was called a Parking Garage complete with car wash and gas station as well as a little elevator.  Check it out. 

This toy kept Gamble busy for most of the afternoon

After playing for a couple of hours, we all got ready to go for dinner at Jeff's friends house. They have a little girl and a baby boy.  The little girl is the same age as Gamble.  They played so well together and I got to hold the baby boy.  His name is Nima.  Holding him for almost half an hour brought back a lot of memories of Gino as a baby.  I guess I still have not lost the mother's touch as I slowly rock baby Nima to sleep.  The photo was taken in front of a painting that Nima's mother painted.  I thought I would let you see if for your self.

Since a lot of memories of Gino's childhood were coming back during the weekend, I thought I would find one of his baby photo to show how cute he was.

Maybe Monday - More Memories

After reading my sister's blog yesterday, I thought of sharing some of our childhood memories and how life was simple but also sweet.

• the neighborhood that we grew up in was not the greatest but we have childhood friends that we played with and to this day we still in contact with them.  Lito lives in Daly City with his wife and two kids.  Lani lives in Burbank with her husband, two kids and her mom, we call her Mama Cely because she is like our mother.  They were our family friends and it's great to be able to still keep in touch.  I saw them last May after 37 years and it did not feel strange after all those years.
• there were a group of friends that got together even after high school.  We would plan for special parties either for birthday or just an excuse to have a great time.  The big one would be our annual Christmas party.  We would organize a group to go carolling to raise money for our party.  At times there would be a fight as one or two would like to be the soloist to sing O Holy Night.  The other fight would be what songs we would do for a particular house.  But in the end, we would laugh about it because we would end up with enough funds for our party.
• a regular hide and seek game turn out to be an all day and night game.  We started playing around after lunch and continued until sundown.  One of our friends decided to hide on one of the trees around our home.  I have to mention that he was one of our friend with the darkest skin tones.  Anyway, since no one could find him, we all decided to go home and have dinner.  After dinner, our parents got a phone call looking for our friend.  All of us went looking for him in every place we could think of, called out his name.  I believe it ended this way, eventually he went home and told us the next day that he was so comfortable up in the tree and fell asleep and when he woke up he was very hungry and went home.

In response to my sister's blog yesterday about being picked as an angel because she was a good girl, well let me share a great story.  When she was in Grade 1 or maybe 2, she decided to throw all the flip flops of children in her class in the garbage. Not sure if she was upset or was doing some sort of revenge.  She must have stayed in the classroom while everyone went to play at recess.  My mother got a call from the principal that afternoon to advice that all this children are going home barefooted because her daughter did something special in class.  So I am not so sure if someone deserve to be an angel when you get in trouble in school.

Do you have childhood stories that you would love to share?  Please send me a comment.

This song reminds of our childhood as we wait for our school bus.