Like most other kids, Christmas was always the holiday to look forward to. Over the years there were many things that seemed to reoccur and made the holiday special. These are just a few of the most memorable things I remember from Christmas's past. Enjoy and Merry Christmas!

1. The Christmas TV specials! I always had to watch Charlie Brown, Rudolph and The Grinch. Frosty, The Little Drummer Boy and It's a Wonderful Life are also notable. This was before cable, VCR's, DVD's and DVR's, so if you missed a special you wouldn't get to see it until the next year.

2. Getting a real tree. My mom would take us to the local grocery store to find a real tree. My sister and I always got to decorate the tree. In those days icicles were big so the tree had to be covered with a good layer of shiny silver icicles.

3. In later years my grandma decided it was easier and cheaper to wrap everything in tin foil. It became a family joke but always reminds me of Christmas. She always wanted to collect the foil and reuse it the next year.

4. Eating cream peas and poofy marshmallow salad. The only time we got to eat these treats was Thanksgiving and Christmas. We also always had a good selection of hot rolls.

5. Always having one big unwrapped gift from Santa. That gift was the first thing you saw and made the entire morning. We were never allowed to open anything on Christmas Eve.

Labels: Christmas, Family, Memories

We love Halloween around our house and think Halloween can be a fun family holiday. Here is our list of the best 10 Halloween movies and shows appropriate for families.

1.) It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown

2.) Hocus Pocus

3.) The Little Vampire

4.) Casper

5.) Halloweentown

6.) Monsters Inc.

7.) The Nightmare Before Christmas

8.) Beetlejuice

9.) The Halloween Tree

10.) Little Monsters

Labels: Family, Halloween, Movies, TV

It's vacation time around the Tucker household and we have been on the road and will be on the road the rest of this week. I've started a new page that will be all about vacations!

Visit the new vacations page and I'll keep you updated on where we are and what we are doing. This is also a great way to keep in touch with our girls while we are away. They love seeing us and finding out what we are doing.

Hop on over to the vacation page and see my updates from Cancun!!

Have a great summer.

Labels: Family, Fun Events, Road Trips, Summer

I was able to spend some valuable daddy/daughter time last weekend with my youngest. Hot Wife and oldest daughter left early for Tulsa to attend a regional dance competition. Youngest daughter and I drove to Tulsa together later that morning and headed straight to PF Chang's for lunch.

After a great lunch we went on a shopping spree around Utica Square searching for some cologne. We were unable to find the fragrance we were searching for but we were told that we might find it at Saks. I told my daughter that we would head over there after shopping at a few other stores.

As the morning wore on my daughter reminded that we needed to find the fragrance. She stated very knowingly, "Daddy, we need to go to bags." I looked at her very puzzled and asked her to repeat herself. She said, "We need to go to bags." I asked why we would need to go to bags and also asked what it was. She explained, "The place with the fragrance!" It then struck me that she was calling Saks, bags.

Of course I cracked up and she explained to me that sacks and bags were the same thing. We had a great time shopping and later met Hot Wife and oldest daughter for the dance competition. Oldest daughter did great and her team won a trophy and she received two ribbons. All in all it was a great weekend and a fun time with our daughters.

Labels: Daughters, Family, funny moment

Grandma Betty bought tickets for the kids and grand-kids to see the Lion King in OKC. The girls really loved the show. Below are a few pics, picture taking was not allowed so I snuck a few iPhone photos for memories.

We treated the girls to Build-A-Bear and the Cheesecake Factory afterwards.

Labels: Daughters, Family, Fun Events, Road Trips

As a family we've been on several vacations and out of town weekends. A few weeks ago we stayed at one of our favorite downtown OKC hotels. I was remembering back several months when we had stayed there and I had noticed two young kids looking out the window of the hotel across the street.

These two kids had binoculars and they were scanning our hotel for open windows. They caught sight of me just about the same time I spotted them. I could see them laughing and talking to each other. I waved and they waved back. You could tell they were pretty happy that they had connected with someone across the way.

Jump forward a few months and I found myself looking out at that same hotel again. I wasn't sure what I was expecting to see across the street but it sure wasn't what I saw. There standing at the wide open window was this nude dude! He was as naked as a jay bird and was putting on his deodorant.

I started cracking up and my family ran to the window to see what I was laughing about. About that time he came back to the window and did a few stretching moves. Luckily my daughters couldn't find him in all of the dozens of windows.

After a few minutes he disappeared and my hot wife spotted an old fat dude sticking his ugly mug out of another window. He too, was unclothed. What a hoot!

The lesson to be learned is to watch what you do in your hotel room while the window is open. You never know who might be watching.

Labels: Family, funny moment, Road Trips

Remember those great old family vacations? You know the ones where you would load the kids into the station wagon and you'd head off for a ten hour drive with no air conditioning. I remember laying on the floorboard in the back of the car on the "hump". It was the best place in the world to nap. It was warm and there was a steady hum that was very soothing.

Nobody had to wear a seat belt and you were free to roam the car. You'd drive until you wore out and you'd stop at the next motel. There were maybe three suitcases and you had everything you could want.

Today's vacations are so much more complicated. There's the planning, the reservations, the mileage and the over abundance of suitcases that barely fit into the one ton SUV.

We are currently on vacation in Breckenridge, Colorado. Our girls are skiing for the first time and they went up the lift and skied down on their first day. It was so much fun watching them cruise down the slope hanging onto our ski poles.

All is well and I will post a few photos from Breckenridge in case you have never been here.

Labels: Family, Memories, Road Trips

This is an update for the girls to read one day in the future:

February 17, 2009 -
You girls are watching lots of Sponge Bob Square Pants these days. Not sure why but you are. We just had Valentine's and you both received necklaces, scratch pads and candy. Both of you take dance, piano, tennis and tumble. We saw Paul Blart Mall Cop and you loved it. Go figure.

Chaney scribbled permanent marker on the counter and has been banned from television for a week. This is good because you have not been doing piano practice and this will now give you plenty of time. Chaney, you love to give gifts and you love to get gifts.

Piper, your dance group performed at the boy's college basketball game last night. You had your teeth cleaned today and will head to Stillwater to see about braces down the line. Piper, you have become interested in the computer and want to start your own blog.

Both of you are attending Cimarron Montessori School and are pretty darn smart. I take you to lunch every Monday and we eat at the Club every Friday.

Labels: Daughters, Family, Memories, Sisters

Remember back in the day when you wanted a photo? We're talking back when I was a kid, in the 70's. We'd either pull out our slim, black 110 camera or if we were lucky we'd pull out the bulky Polaroid Instant Camera.

Taking pictures has come a long way baby. As kids we could get instant Polaroids with the funky colors and funny border around them like the New Years 2009 photo above or we would have to send our 110 or 35mm film off to be developed. A week or two later it would return and we would gleefully rip open our envelope to see our dozen grand photos.

If you were like my friends and I, you would find a stack full of blurry photos mixed in with a few shots of your friends with their heads cut off. At that age it didn't matter much, that the color was bad, the composition was horrible and you just shelled out eight bucks for twelve bad pictures.

Fast forward to 2009 and my how things have changed. Polaroid camera you say? 110 film you ask? Those days are long gone. Today we have micro cameras that take pictures big enough for posters and they're digital! That means you get to take as many pictures as you want and you can delete the bad shots. Wow! What a deal.

No more film, no more waiting, no more photo albums... what!! No more photo albums? That's right. With the ease of today's photography many people are accumulating thousands of digital pictures without ever taking the time to get them developed and stuck into photo albums. We've all got a zillion pictures but we can't ever look at them. Wrong! Read on...

I'm guilty of not getting digital photos developed and now have a good thousand pictures taking up space on my computer. Today there are great sites like Flickr and Facebook that allow us to post our photos online. This is a great way to share photos with people a world away.

I've also recently discovered a great software called Jalbum. This software builds your albums for you and helps you upload them to their site or your own site. It's great!

I recently uploaded the photos from our 2008 Disney World trip. They are now online for the family and the world to see. Take a look and see what we were doing exactly one year ago today. Just click on the main photo and it will transition to the next. Enjoy!

The Tucker 2008 Disney World Trip

Labels: Daughters, Family, Fun Events, Hot Wife, Memories, Parenting, Photo, Road Trips

It's my sister's 47th birthday and she is now officially older than me. You see we've both been 46 years old for the last 23 days. My sister and I were both born in 1962 and we are not twins. Huh?

My sister was born in January and I came along later that year in December. Growing up, many people thought we were twins. We even looked a bit alike at a very young age (see photo below).

Luckily we outgrew the look alike thing and I ended up with the good looking gene while she ended up with the mediocre gene. Sad but true.

My sister and I grew up in the 70's when there really wasn't anything to do. No video games, no iPod, no cable and no VCR. My only hope to find adventure was to terrorize my sister.

My favorite terror plot was taking the talk thingy out of here phone. In those days we had to hold a receiver that was connected to the phone by a cord. You could unscrew the receiver and remover the sound making device. My sister would run into her room and answer her phone only to hear the person on the other end repeatedly say, "Hello? Hello?" I would normally be under her bed laughing my butt off.

Listening under the bed with an old cassette tape recorder was another fun activity. My best friend and I would sneak under the bed and listen to all of her boring phone conversations. We would usually hear something like this, "Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? You've got to be kidding me? Are you kidding me?"

Eventually we would get bored and spring out from under the bed, leaving my sister screaming for mom at the top of her lungs. We had many more good times pulling pranks on my sister which I will detail later. I just want to end this post by saying happy birthday sis and beware, there might be Saran Wrap stretched over the toilet seat next time you sit down!

Labels: 70's, Family, funny moment, Memories, Photo, Sisters