I'm pretty sure this was 1980, as I think it was our last Christmas in Illinois. I'm also pretty sure that Grandmother and Grampy were visiting. The red flannel pajamas were a special Christmas thing... my longhandles had a flap in the back. We are looking at a Superman Liquiforms toy that was basically some weird, colored plastic goo that you squirted out of bottles and let it congeal into whatever shape you made it into. The idea was that you could paint pictures (in this case, pictures of Superman) that would harden into rubber plastic decorations or something. I remember playing with it about twice before we gave up on it. Sitting on the sofa at the right is a Etch-a-Sketch type toy with a joystick controller. I can't remember what it was called. And partially hidden in the Dave's shadow is Darth Vader's TIE Fighter (with the detachable wings removed). In the big box at left was our family's first microwave oven.

we made a tree out of 3 kinds of boughs. and a bucket. works for me, and smelled fantastic. the stockings were hung by the...rocks from the north shore. with care.