OT: Tracking Santa Around the Globe
 

I was born in August of 1956, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. My dad was in the Air Force, and though we moved a bit my first four years, by age 5 we were back in the Springs, where I grew up and lived until I moved to NJ in my early 20s.

When I was little, I remember tuning in to the radio every Christmas Eve to listen to reports of NORAD's radar tracking of Santa. NORAD was based in a deep vault beneath nearby Cheyenne Mountain, and was highly secure and somewhat mysterious, except for Christmas Eve. Here's the story of how it all started: 60 Years Tracking Santa.

They now have the ability to provide much higher-tech tracking, of course, and there is a very cool real-time tracking site online.

So those of you with little ones who want to know JUST WHAT'S TAKING HIM SO LONG, you can show them where he is, and how busy he is, and how fast he's flying those reindeer!

Just click the logo below:

http://www.noradsanta.org/img/static...phic_thumb.jpg

So cute, right? Makes me wish my son was young again.

There was an article in the NY Times earlier this week chronicling the start of this.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/20/up...rys-radar.html

The clipping of the original Sears ad brought back memories, too. It was a number starting with ME (for the kiddies here, telephone exchanges once upon a time started with two letters that substituted for the numbers, making the number two letters, followed by five numbers). Our phone number, when I was five, started with ME (which was referred to as MElrose, standing in for "63")--they ditched the ME sometime in the early 60s.

My dad was, at various times, stationed at Ent AFB (now the US Olympic Training Center), Peterson Field (now Peterson AFB), and the Air Force Academy. It was an odd upbringing for a kid in a military family. I saw some friends move away in grade school only to come back, after traveling the world, in high school. My dad's job (computer stuff back in the days of coding in binary) just kept him in one place. I used to envy my friends, but the Springs was a great place to grow up back then.

Didn't know that things got so high-tech. (lol)

I never believed in Santa, so I never looked for him.

My tracking device, was, where did my mom hide the stuff?

I found the bag one year.

My 2 sisters and I opened it. It was all clothing, but you do know how girls like clothes. So we sorted it out between us, according to sizes. We never got toys, our relatives gave us the toys.

My mom caught onto to that one, and she then told me she had a new hiding place for xmas gifts. She told me there was a secret hatch in the basement, and she stored them in there. I spent over a year looking for that new place. It didn't exist. She fooled me. but not for much longer...................

I found the gifts, she now had them wrapped and hidden in her closet. I learned how to open up gift wrapping without tearing it, taking the box out, looking inside, then putting it back in the gift wrap, like it was never touched.

--------------------------------

My kids, their brain worked like mine did. They didn't believe in Santa since they were like age 1. That was because they pulled off Santa's hat and beard and found out it was their uncle. (lol) They wouldn't tell me they didn't believe in Santa, because Santa always got them good things. but anyway......

I had to play games with my kids each year so that at least they may be surprised. I mean how surprised can you be when you give your mom and dad a list.

First, I tried just wrapping the gifts, but they would shake them, size them up and try to guess what was in it.

Second, I tried to hide them in my car, in my trunk. That worked for awhile (lol), they found them.

Third, I wrapped them in different gift wrapping paper so that I would know who got what, but they wouldn't. This lasted 2 years. (Remember, they didn't have the gift that I had to be able to unwrap a present and put it back, like it was never touched.

Fifth, the next year I did put the proper name tags on the presents. This confused them even more.

Fourth, Wrap the gifts, but switch the name tags. That meant whatever was my daughters had my sons name on it and whatever was his, had his name on it This drove them really batty that year.

Fifth, the next year I did put the proper name tags on the presents. This confused them even more.

I had many pleasant days watching them sitting there perplexed trying to figure out what is real and what isn't. Is that bad of me? (lol)

amy

Pollution index over 500 in Beijing right now. I hope he brought his GPS.

The telephone. We used to have a party line with the next door neighbor. Good thing they didn't use their phone a lot.

My phone was FE (FEderal), others in Bayonne were HE (Hemlock).

I honestly don't recall when I stopped believing in Santa--to tell you the truth, I can't ever remember literally believing, though I probably did when I was four (the year we spent with my grandparents on their farm while my dad was on a year-long tour in Greenland), but it was still fun to pretend to believe.

Have to tell you that I had tears in my eyes when I clicked that link you gave on how this started with tracking Santa.

So what are you doing this year for xmas. I think I remember last year you went back to Colorado.

Nothing much this year, just relaxing at home, enjoying the fact that I went out to get the mail in my flip-flops (since it was in the 70s here). I picked up some crabcakes for dinner tomorrow. I'm texting with my older son right now, who just texted me a photo of their cat that his g/f "decorated" with a huge bow. The cat looks a little ticked, lol.

So not spending it with family this year, but I'm meeting up with kiddos at my Dad's house in AZ the third week in January.