When you have scores of uncles, aunts, cousins, grandparents and great grandparents all within driving distance and you're the only grandbabies to be doted over, face it: Christmas is going to be close to ridiculous when it comes to the stack of presents.

In my house alone, my two beautiful grandbabies must have had over 50 packages. My wife is absolutely determined to spoil these kids rotten given half the opportunity. Ashley, age 4, gets a big kick out of opening the presents but quickly loses interest in the present and moves to the next.

Ava, who is only two, fumbled through one present and pretty much gave up the ghost. Too much work and who cares? So she wandered into the other room where my wife had opened a huge box that contained a new chair for her computer station. What is it about empty boxes and kids?

As Ava has wondered to the other end of the house with me in tow, I limped along on my brand new flaming cane which I got from my son Jason and his wife Jessica. She goes into their toy room (yes, they have their own toy room in my house…I remind you my wife is determined to spoil the tar out of these kids). There she locates her dad's Christmas gifts which we gave to him when he was only two over three decades ago- two Tonka trucks.

Nothing is built better than a Tonka truck. Both Ava and Ashley are actually small enough to sit in the body of the dump truck. Back when I was able to bend over and push them around, I would give them a ride in their daddy's 30-year old dump trucks.

So Ava retrieves her fleet of Tonka equipment and heads down to the den where the empty box is waiting to be hauled to the trash. NOT! That's the new garage for the Tonka truck fleet, which, by the way, includes a working crane as well.

What is it with kids? Here they are with scores of toys and gifts which they could care less about. Give them a couple of 30-year old toy trucks and a durable box and they're good to go for the rest of the day.

I realize there is some unwritten grandmother rule that says you're supposed to buy hundreds of dollars worth of crap for your grandkids. Why? Just because there's this rule that suggests it's your job to spoil them? I don't know who is worst- my wife (Grammy) or their other grandmother (Granny).

Parents establish these rules and boundaries and my wife Christine and her partner in crime, the other grandmother, Debbie, are constantly moving the borders around. Eating, for instance, is an impossible challenge for four year old Ashley. I've never seen the kid eat real food, which is why she and Ava, two years her junior, are the same size. They could actually pass for twins if you just looked at their height and weight.

Ava never met a jellybean she didn't like. As soon as she arrives at Grammy's house she makes a beeline for the infamous jellybean stash in the den. Poor Casey, her mom, warns her to take only two. Ava complies, grabbing two handfuls of jellybeans, which she clinches like a vice-grip. God bless me. What's with the grandmother's disdain for the rules?

My favorite gift to my grandbabies was a recorded book that I did with them in my bed, "Frosty the Snowman." Technology is wonderful. You can narrate a book with your own voice and the voices of your grandchildren.

So here we are sitting up in Jiddo's (Arabic for grandfather) bed recording the book, just one week after my hip surgery, with Ava on one side and Ashley on the other.

The most precious part of the recording was their comments in the background. As I would identify everyone and comment on what they were saying on each page, Ashley would remind me "And don't forget Grammy is here too!"

The last page of the book had us all singing the last verse of the jingle together. What a gift to unwrap and replay in thirty years. My guess is it will have the durability of two Tonka trucks and an empty box.