Hearing Loss LIVE! Talks Christmas Memories

Hearing Loss LIVE! Wishes you the best ever this holiday season.

Enjoy this short special where we talk about Christmas memories. So put on some comfy clothes, grab a drink and your favorite furry buddy and take a much needed break! 

Please join us in the new year when we have more and more special guests and continue to introduce you to what Hearing Loss LIVE! can do to help you with your success.

Check out your Christmas YouTube video- Star Wars and all! https://youtu.be/-rG0-Rqvn3g

Transcript

[Star Wars theme music in background] A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, Hearing Loss LIVE! Talks, Michele, Chelle and Julia continue their quest to help those with hearing loss and their hearing counterparts help themselves. Adapting to hearing loss can be overwhelming no matter how you get there. Hearing Loss LIVE! wants to help you take control of your hearing loss. But today, put on your comfy pants, grab your drink of choice, and a furry companion and let's laugh together.

Chelle: I have, I have a memory suddenly pop up. And that is my family is the big Star Wars family. I mean, my dad took us to the Star Wars two hours away when it first came out because we didn't have a theater where I lived and grew up. So we, we'd see Star Wars a couple times, like one after each other, not twice in a row and go in and do that. So every Thanksgiving and Christmas, we go through the Star Wars movies as a family. And I'm hard to hearing and my dad was getting pretty hard to hear and at the end, so we just blast it. And my mom hates it, she cannot stand Star Wars anymore. And she runs screaming, but you know, even my older two kids, they were like, Okay, let's watch our wives now.

A memorable Christmas. Of course, you guys know that my husband used to work for a major airline. So since 1993, you know, we basically for years could fly anywhere on the world for free. So when my oldest son was a senior in high school, we wanted to take one last trip together. Because you know, when your kids go off to college, you know, you're not going to get together the way that you you can when they're still living at home. So we flew to Germany, on Christmas day in 1999. And we traveled all through Germany for eight days went to other Christmas markets. The kids would get on the train and go their own way. And it was just magical. We just had a wonderful time in Germany. And it was kind of a last hurrah for all the kids living at home and they were all they were all teenagers that year. I think now Ian was 11. So we were not quite all teenagers, but three teenagers and 11 year old. So it was fun. And we were all packed in this rental van and Ian was in the back with the luggage and he just had a little window to look out. He always recounts that yeah, I was stabbed in the back. Uh, well, that's what you get for being the little kid. Anyway, that was fun. I love Christmas in Germany, their Christmas markets are just so much fun to go to and all the different things going on.

I don't know. I don't know that I had a lot as a kid. But one of the things when my kids were older. My dad still lives in Sanford. Well, he lives in Walnut Creek. So he lives in Northern California. And so instead of us doing Christmas gifts, I would just take the kids to California for three to five days or whatever and we'd wander around and pick places we wanted to visit while we were there and stay in downtown San Francisco with all the Christmas and they have their fancy street you know with the big like Louis futon and and Michael Kias shops they they actually close the street. It's a large street usually traffic well they close it off, and they put down turf, they turn it into a sledding hill and there's like food trucks and different events that they do day and night. We had a lot of fun a couple years doing that and we always get a tattoo. Everybody gets a tattoo

Oh, I just really liked Christmas when all the kids were little my sister and I we got together a lot. Our family she has three kids, I have four and we always just to make Christmas just so fun, just you know, making reindeer parents and things when the kids were little still little and believe Living in Santa Claus and all of that. I don't know, I've not enjoyed Christmas, really, since moving to Minnesota because my house is so small. All of my kids come, we have to run a house in town. And it's fun, it's just kind of not the same as being able to host it in your own home. So moving is big on my list. As part of the reason, just having a big enough house to host all four of my kids and company. We did do a Christmas here. We had a neighbor, who built a new house, and she lived in Chicago, and they very rarely used our house. So Christmas time, she would let us use her house, for my sister's family came one year, and they all stayed over there. And that was fun. Christmas in northern Minnesota is just beautiful. I mean, it's always a white Christmas. You know, I don't know, I think as I've gotten older, the whole gift giving thing isn't as fun because I become a non consumer. I just don't like buying stuff just to be buying stuff. And, you know, I think even our kids are in that mode. They'd rather have an experience rather than just more stuff. And you say all the articles about people our age, their parents passing away, and then we're having to deal with all of the crap that they've accumulated. So, gift giving isn't as much fun for me, and I've never liked shopping. So Chris, Christmas, for me was always about family and cooking, cooking a lot of yummy, traditional things to cook. And when my sister and I get together, it's it's a lot of fun. Because where my kids have always said we love when you and soon make a holiday dinner because you guys don't even coordinate and you just always know what the other one's doing. And you just always work together and there's no need for any kind of direction. And it's just how we grew up.

I actually had some shower thoughts on my Christmas memories. So Christmas Eve, we would have to do the manger scene. And we would have to dress up as Joseph and Mary and there was always a baby. So somebody had to be the baby. But somebody always had a baby. So there was a live baby. And we did the manger scene and somebody read read the Bethlehem story. So a couple years, we only had boys. So Mary would be my nephew, or not my nephew, my cousin Matthew, he was always the one that had to be married. He was so mad about it all the time.

Um, I you know, I don't have a whole lot of memories of Christmas. As a kid. One thing we always stood. There was a little hot in the parking lot of one of the strip malls and the town but was more a little more populated than our small town. And we would always go there to see Santa Matt has workshop and that little hot so that was always a big thing. I don't know, starting Christmas traditions after I got married my husband's family. They never put up their Christmas tree and while they were away at at mass in the evening, either the dad or mom would stay behind and put up the Christmas tree and everything. So everything came Christmas, the the tree, the presence to guests. So we started our tradition in the same way. And my husband was on and he was in the Marine Corps. So he was out to sea. He was on an aircraft carrier. One my three oldest kids were small and wasn't home at Christmas time. So just to bring a little bit more festivity into it. We put the tree up early, and then that tradition kind of stuck. And the kids liked putting up the tree. But it was kind of cool that you know, the kids would come out on Christmas morning and there was the tree and everything. It was kind of a real shock. You know, you kind of didn't get that gradual build up to Christmas and then we always fly After our tree up while on to drown away, because why put it up on Christmas Eve and then take it down New Years. So you know, just different traditions. But I think in our family, we, we put a little more emphasis on St. Nicholas Day, which is December sex, we hang socks on St. Nicholas Day and then hanging up socks as a huge thing for us. You always get a lot of things in your sock. So those were fun times.

My Christmas tradition never stayed completely the way it was we evolved quiet about when the kids were little, we did the whole Christmas Eve thing. And gosh, I was so excited. I'd be up late at night, Christmas Eve put in things away, and they would open one present that night. And then after they went to bed, I would lay down the tree and put different things down. And so that was the main thing while they were little. When they became teenagers, I got harder. And I didn't know what to do. So I switch things up with the 12 days of Christmas. I gave them when present for 12 days, like every every day, they got a different little present. Now it was fun for a little while. After that, it was just kind and they got three big presence on Christmas Day, something like that to make up for make a little more of a Christmas morning. Then they got to where you know, they didn't like anything. And I was watching you know, I tried to buy things that maybe they like didn't like or whatever nights watching them just kind of throw them aside. And I'm like, Okay, I'm done with this habit. We just have a few Christmas gifts, and we go somewhere. So we did that for quite a little while. That was fun. And we enjoyed that. Now my kids are 2820 2831 and 32. They have grandsons. And they're 11 and five, obviously, illuminant, six, seven and six now. So the little ones still using the by four but the 11 year old is you know getting at age or it's just about bones, I'm having a harder time with Christmas again, I hate to buy just stuff. So I'm at the point where you just get the kids the money and let them go for they're usually pretty happy with that.

Brother years, I remember a couple of years, we would visit my son in Salem, Massachusetts. And because we're we're all traveling in, we didn't really get gifts beforehand. And then we would all go around the town and shop for each other that day. You know, a day or two before Christmas Eve or, you know, whatever day we happen to arrive and just do some little local shopping that way it's a great way to help the local vendors, the local business owners, and not may not get to the big box stores. So I think gift giving is kind of become a little more less commercialized in our family we would rather travel or give some kind of an experience