‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the Bay Area, the stores were all closed, not even a boulangerie, er, boulangerea, whatever.

But things were stirring here at home of course, with pint-sized tornados bouncing around all Christmas. We had two sessions, actually, presents from grandparents and an uncle on Christmas Eve, and from Santa on Christmas morning. At left, you see one particular nephew going nuts over a stack of Yu-Gi-Oh cards brought over from Japan, shortly after his brother got a Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga to play on both their new Gamboy Advances (man, things have changed–I remember playing Pong at their age).

At right you see the elder tornado briefly glancing over the second-season DVDs for Futurama, before quickly returning to the cool new Gamboys with backlighting!!! Coooolll!!!

In the words of one nephew, this had to be the best Christmas ever! (Well, I thought it was okay, but hey, who am I to disagree? After all, I didn’t get a Gameboy myself…. I did, however, stay in synch with Christmas in Japan, and enjoyed some KFC for dinner (just me, we went eclectic). At least here in California I didn’t have to wait three hours to get some dark meat and popcorn chicken.

“Man, this was the best Xmas ever!”