{"id":712,"date":"2011-12-19T11:03:36","date_gmt":"2011-12-19T16:03:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/?p=712"},"modified":"2021-03-22T08:56:12","modified_gmt":"2021-03-22T12:56:12","slug":"holiday-cheese","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/?p=712","title":{"rendered":"Holiday Cheese"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/picasaweb.google.com\/lh\/photo\/uVb5hK7O0KoH_Bkvw30C3tMTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0?feat=directlink\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Cian rocks out the Santa Hat\" src=\"https:\/\/lh5.googleusercontent.com\/-QrRZ-iQlPoI\/TudclFkR23I\/AAAAAAAADk8\/QGJ7W0CF2rc\/s576\/IMG_20111129_094717.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"181\" height=\"242\" align=\"right\"><\/a>I love the Holidays.&nbsp; I love the Christmas season.&nbsp; I love the tree, the decorations, the hats, the carols, the unwrapping of gifts, the lights&#8230; I love it!<\/p>\n<p>To me, Christmastime has always been secular, and&nbsp; that&#8217;s how I continue to celebrate it.&nbsp; The giving gives me a great feeling, and the receiving ain&#8217;t half bad, either!<\/p>\n<p>As my kids are getting older, and their gifts are evolving, I find myself taking more enjoyment in their tearing open the paper, in their <em>need<\/em> to have the toy\/video game\/stuffed animal out of the box <em>right now<\/em> so that they can play with the awesomeness that has been bestowed upon them.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/picasaweb.google.com\/lh\/photo\/3eqMf3tJeZgF3yUpnRqrWdMTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0?feat=directlink\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/lh6.googleusercontent.com\/--4M0C-UeT_g\/Tu9YImyUJHI\/AAAAAAAADlw\/dHpfWn4JY28\/s576\/IMG_20111217_132515.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"181\" height=\"242\" align=\"left\"><\/a>We&#8217;ve already had a couple of celebrations amongst family and friends, and with the way that our family is blended, we will be having them off and on through the middle of January.<\/p>\n<p>I have to admit, my wife does the heavy lifting.&nbsp; She braves Black Friday every year, so that we can afford things that we wouldn&#8217;t otherwise be able to purchase and give.&nbsp; She meticulously wraps every gift, because she cannot abide my fumbling and inexact paper folding.&nbsp; She juggles the schedules of two distinct blended families, not to mention both her extended family and mine.<\/p>\n<p>It just wouldn&#8217;t be Christmas without all of her hard work, and for that, I want to wish her, most of all, Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and a Joyous New Year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I love the Holidays.&nbsp; I love the Christmas season.&nbsp; I love the tree, the decorations, the hats, the carols, the unwrapping of gifts, the lights&#8230; I love it! To me, Christmastime has always been secular, and&nbsp; that&#8217;s how I continue &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/?p=712\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[8],"class_list":["post-712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-adventures-in-parenthood"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paQnES-bu","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=712"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7981,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712\/revisions\/7981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}