Merry Xmas
But, of course! From our family to you and yours, we wish you a safe and healthy holiday. It’s been another eventful year. We lost a cat – Patch. We gained two cats – Tillie and Peas. Peas was an afterthought. We mistakenly left Tillie’s sister behind at the pet store. My bad. You cannot replace a lost cat – for (darn) sure. …but we had an extra food bowl…. Now the table is full once more. Happy and merry to you all. We are both fortunate and happy to wish you all the best. YES, they all jumped up on the table and lined right up. Didn’t you realize? I herd cats!
Redundant
This is a goofy family pic of the three brothers. There are few enough – pictures. It was a coincidental habit to buy each other the same Xmas presents. Brilliant minds think alike? This was the year of the (trench) coat. It turns out that each of us got a coat. Brilliant? This was not random. We repeated with other gifts in other years nearly a perfect record for many years. I wish we had had a “Mercedes year.” Alas, no. But, today, one more birthday. Happy! This one is unforgettable. Eric was born on the last day of school when I was in the third grade. Third grade was memorable for other reasons too. It was the year I met Colleen for the first time. Yes, (as Frank Sinatra sang), it was a very good year.
Open till sold
Hiawatha has been there for a long time. We’ve never been inside. The store is going out of business. Nice sign. It might be a nice time to remind you that I shoot Singers.
I get the machine and the serial number. The serial numbers identify where and when the machine was manufactured. Nice again – but generally useless information.
We have been seeking a pencil pine for Xmas. Artificial please, and please make it a low $$. Instead we found an alternative when and where we were not looking. White pine, done well, and a brother. We couldn’t resist. I guess you had to be there to appreciate that a long (very) search had come to a (sort of) end.
Xmas in June
Truthfully, we got these gifts right after Xmas. Sale! It will fit in December. Smart? The stuffed animal is hideous, as in ugly. That’s exactly why I got it. Jules had so many stuffed animals as a child, she finally said, enough! And I got her one more….yup, the ugliest stuffed animal ever. Noa should have one too. Don’t you think?
Three Guys
I have switched hard drives (not enough storage space) so many times I did not know what I would get when I did a search for brother John. It’s been a few years now. I try to remember on his birthday. This one image popped up. I didn’t take it. Ha! It’s an early iteration of my Manhattan apartment before many renovations. We all had mustaches. That’s funny (to me). I kept mine all these years, Eric and John were more casual. Their significant others did not insist… It’s Christmas. We had an almost uncanny knack of duplicating presents. This was the year of the overcoat/raincoat. Everyone got one. “Like minds think alike?” It happened way more than this one time. Yeah, Cabbage patch and pound puppies and tickle me Elmo, but overcoats? Gimme a break.
Less Is More
After houses and decorations, there was not much interest in decorating a few dozen cookies. So…. One two three… Done. They are not burnt. The dark ones are gingerbread to contrast the butter cookies. My kids would do works of art in Christmas’s past. But I was abandoned and tasked with a few dozen unadorned cookies…..And less sugar actually is better sometimes. It’s still yum.
Follow This
Great ideas! At Christmas each family comes and distributes their gifts into the waiting basket with your name on it. There are a bunch of variations on the scheme but it makes chaos so much more organized.
And for an even better scheme – use ribbon. String the ribbon from a central point and let the recipient follow his/her color to their gifts. You can put a few in the interim and make it even more fun. Either way, it’s a good idea. Too late for this year and there are a lot fewer kids around these days. But keep this in mind if you still entertain hoards for the holiday.
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