About 10 years ago, my Mom bought four gingerbread house kits for her four granddaughters (my nieces). You decorate them with icing and bits of candy and stuff. On the Friday after Thanksgiving, the girls each decorated their houses, everybody else helped, and we all had fun with it.
Then one of the girls said to my Dad, “Grandpa, you have to be the judge. Who made the best house?” Well, of course Grandpa wasn’t going to pronounce any of his grandkids better than the others. Instead, he took four index cards and wrote things like “Best use of frosting”, “Most creative”, “Best use of candy” and so forth, and made a grand show of presenting each award. Everybody won!
The gingerbread houses became a Thanksgiving Friday tradition, and it was always fun to see what silly categories Dad would come up with each year.
Some years ago, our family, aunt, uncle and cousins all off to the tree farm to cut our own Christmas trees. My cousin, being the oldest male kid was the hatchet man. Aunt and uncle selected a tree and directed my cousin to it. He swings the hatchet back and takes out his mothers front teeth. Good times.
Most of my Christmases have been great. As a kid my parents always made Christmas magical. We always had lots of family get togethers. As a parent, Christmases with my husband and kids have always been fun and now there are grandkids which are really fun to have around.
We did a fun thing this year. My sister and BIL bought and live in our Italian grandma’s house where there were always big family celebrations that always included spaghetti and meatballs. In fact, we still have that as part or our meal every Christmas. My sister hosts Christmas Eve. She has a picture on the wall next to her kitchen table. It’s a picture dating back to Christmas 1963. The whole family is around the table. I’m a toddler on my dad’s lap. This year we re-created that picture. The table is different, but it’s in front of the same window, most of the people except for me, my mom and an uncle are all dead. My grandpa is holding a plate of spaghetti in one hand and a fork with a massive amount of spaghetti on a fork with his mouth wide open. An aunt is hold up a fork with a meatball speared on the end. My grandma’s eyes are half shut. My great-grandma is standing in the corner with her full apron on. I have my fingers in my mouth. It’s just a great picture. So I assigned roles for everyone to play. It was really fun. We laughed our butts off. For a spur of the moment idea, the new pic came out really great.
I was pretty lonely on N.Y.E. in 1970. My parents had divorced when I was 16. I had moved with my Mom and my siblings to a larger city and a new high school with 2 thousand kids spread over 3 grades. I felt really lost. On N.Y.Eve I drove to a dance in the country to meet a buddy of mine so we could check out the local girls who had never met us.
Just before midnight I recognized a girl who was standing in the crowd watching the dancers. I worked up my courage and asked her to dance. She said 'sure".
After that first song was over, the place got dark, the balloons fell from the ceiling, and the band played “Auld Lang Syne”. After everyone said “Happy New Year”
I moved toward her to kiss her and to my great surprise she kissed me back. That was 52 years ago, we are still married.
