This year our very old camcorder died. Probably right in the middle of me doing some video tutorial. But as soon as it died, my heart screamed, “NOOOOOOOOOO!” because it takes those miniDV tapes and there was a whole box of those tapes waiting to be transferred from tape to computer. How does one transfer miniDV tapes to the computer you ask? Oh, by inserting them into your camcorder and plugging it into your computer and letting windows slowly (real time) play them and record them into files on your desktop! In order to do this though — that’s right — you MUST have the camcorder.

Had I done any of that? Why no of course not! There’s always tomorrow to do that sort of thing!

Once the ability to move those tapes to a digital form had been removed, I desperately wanted to watch EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM, of course. I debating looking on craigslist for a cheap minidv camcorder, but ended up borrowing one from a friend for the weekend, and spent it going over every 90 minutes switching to a new tape.

I ended up sitting and watching quite a bit of our kids when they were wee little tykes, playing, interacting, being ADORABLE. It made me realize that those days of wonder around Christmas are nearly at an end. OK, it kind of IS at an end for the boy child — he’s 11, and way too cool for excitement around decorating the tree, making gingerbread houses, and general Christmasy merriment. It’s not that he doesn’t want a tree, or want gingerbread cookies — it’s just that he’s MUCH too old to show ANY sort of childish glee in doing these things.

Jocelyn the 9 year old is still got a bit of it. OK, a lot of it. She loves helping me make gingerbread, pestered me to “let’s decorate the tree NOW” and is generally up for any crafty (let’s face it, Christmas can be a super crafty holiday) endeavor.

I’m hoping we get to keep some of the wonder of Christmas this year — and hopefully for a few more years to come — crossing my fingers that Christmas never becomes blase in this household. If it does.. at least I can watch our home movies of Christmas when they were 3 and 5, completely wide eyed and jumping up and down with Christmas excitement.

Jocelyn at 4 years old, Christmas 2006

Ethan at 6 years old, Christmas 2006