Perry shares Christmas traditions with press corps

BURLINGTON, Iowa - Each Christmas, Rick Perry wakes up, tracks down his video camera, and makes his way into the rooms of his children, Griffin, 28, and Sydney, 25. From the time that they were "itty bitty," as he says, each year he has videotaped them getting up and going downstairs to see the Christmas tree and opening presents.

"It's kind of like dad, you are so lame," he said, mimicking his children. "But I think they would be disappointed if I didn't do it."

The Texas governor ventured aboard the bus carrying his press corps Thursday morning and spent ten minutes sharing his family's Christmas traditions en route to the first event of the day, a breakfast meet and greet at the Drake on the Riverfront restaurant here.

He recalled fondly the trips he made to his grandparents' house as a child, where his grandfather would put a dollar bill for each of the grandchildren in the tree. "A dollar you know in 1955 was like pretty serious amount of money for me so I that was what I remembered was getting a dollar from my granddad," he said. Both grandparents, who lived about 20 miles outside Paint Creek, were great cooks, he said.

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Now, his wife Anita will do the cooking - turkey and dressing, candied yams, and Perry's favorite dessert, black cherry Jell-O with cream cheese topping. The family will drive to see Anita's parents in College Station, Texas, but probably won't visit Perry's parents, Ray and Amelia, since the drive is too long. Perry talks to them every week, he said, though "they know this year's kind of different."

The family will attend services at Lake Hills church in Austin on Christmas Eve, and the next morning Perry will give Anita her present. It's a bag, he said, one that she picked out and he paid for. He wasn't allowed to sneak a look at his gifts before the holiday.

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