Read an Excerpt
Christmas Morning
By K. Kramer, Erin Cameron AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2014 Ken Kramer
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4969-4677-5
CHAPTER 1
In a small town in southern Indiana a family lived with their two children, Nicholas, age eight, and his sister, Megan, age ten. It was a bright, cool crisp Thanksgiving morning.
While the family sat around the kitchen table eating breakfast Nicholas and Megan's parents said they had a surprise for them. The night before when the children were asleep their grandparents had called. The family was invited to come to Vermont and visit them for Christmas. Nicholas and Megan were excited, because they had never been to their grandparent's house. Every Christmas their grandparents had visited them in Indiana.
This trip was going to be something special. Grandma and Grandpa live on a farm in Vermont, twelve hundred miles away. We would be driving, because we had to bring a lot of clothes and presents with us for Christmas.
For weeks Mom and Dad had planned on what to bring, what games to play in the car, and what homework we needed from school. Dad said it would take two days to make this journey.
Megan and Nicholas were excited as the trip to Vermont came closer. We were leaving December 22, three days before Christmas. It had been snowing for a couple of hours, and our parents were concerned about the road conditions. Three hours later, the weather began to clear. We began packing up the car with clothes, boots, coats, games, homework from school, food, snacks, presents, and drinks. The car was packed with little room to spare. Off we went!
Dad drove all day except stops for gas, lunch, and dinner. The roads were clear and the snow had stopped. Megan and I played games to pass the time away. We even did some reading for our school assignments. Mom was getting tired and tried to stay awake by talking about how wonderful this Christmas vacation would be. But it wasn't long before she fell asleep.
Darkness started to settle in on the road, and Dad was getting tired. He announced that the next big city was New York City. He planned to stop and stay in a nice big hotel in New York City.
Looking out the windows of the car, Megan and I saw all the bright lights, and the traffic slowed down. People seemed to be everywhere. Store fronts were decorated for the Christmas season.
Dad found a hotel on Broadway in New York City. The doorman was so nice and took our bags and parked our car. We looked around; the city seemed so big and so busy. There were so many cars, cabs, and people. This was different from our small town in Indiana.
We walked into the hotel. A big beautiful Christmas tree was all lit up in the center of the lobby. The tree was decorated with lights, candy canes, and hundreds of large ornaments. The bellman showed us to our room on the twentieth floor. It was a large beautiful a spacious room with a large basket of fruit on the living room coffee table. Megan and I ran to the windows to look out over the city. The view was so pretty, and we could see for miles. The city was lit up with thousands of lights.
It had been an exhausting and busy day. We went to bed early and slept through the night. Dad woke up first and said, "Let's have a good breakfast in the hotel and then get on the road before traffic builds up." After breakfast and packing up the car again we started on our way to Grandma and Grandpa's house.
Less than two hours leaving New York City it began to snow, Megan and I were still tired and fell asleep in the back of the car. The snow began to come down much heavier and the traffic began to slow. We only had a couple of hours to travel.
When we woke up, we were in Vermont. We could see the empty farm fields beginning to fill with new soft white snow. It was a beautiful sight with a full moon coming through the car windows.
By six o'clock in the evening on December 23rd. we were excited to get to Grandma and Grandpa's house. They live in a large old, well-kept farm-house with an enormous barn. As Dad drove down a country road the darkness settled in and snow began to fall.
Dad turned onto a road that led to Grandpa's house. Just as we pulled up the driveway, Grandpa heard the car and ran out to meet us. Standing on the front porch, Grandma was excited to see us. She was calling out "Hello, hello! Come in, come in! "She could not believe how big I had grown and how pretty Megan had become.
As we entered the house, we could see that Grandpa already had a fire going in the fireplace. We also smelled something cooking in the kitchen. Grandma had made Christmas cookies and dinner for all of us. We talked about our trip and our overnight stay in New York City. Grandma was interested in Megan's dancing lessons and my baseball team. And of course, she wanted to know how we were doing in school.
When dinner was over, Grandpa and Dad took the luggage upstairs to our bedrooms. Grandma came upstairs to show Megan her room and then she showed me my bedroom. Megan was excited. She came to my bedroom to tell me all about her room. "Nick, you must come to my bedroom to see it."
It had been our mother's bedroom when she was a little girl. Grandma had left it the same for years, just the way our mother did when she left to get married. Seeing us in her old bedroom our mother came in. She pointed out all the little things that had been hers and how she did her homework at the desk every night.
After the long trip, we were tired, and it was getting quite late. We agreed it was time to go to bed. After Ma gave us a kiss good night she reminded us "Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, and we will need help with a lot of chores."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Christmas Morning by K. Kramer, Erin Cameron. Copyright © 2014 Ken Kramer. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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