There’s a term I haven’t heard in a while, but it is what entered my head this morning. Winter time is a good time to feather one’s nest and hunker down in it.
Our children and grandchildren didn’t do that yesterday, and we’re glad of it. We had a very nice family “Christmas” yesterday. One day a year my children honor me by gathering at my home, and I’m grateful for that. We had a compressed celebration, D2 and her family were at a wedding an hour and a half north of here on Saturday night. The snow created travel difficulties, but they arrived in the late morning. We had waffles, sausage, smokie links, fruit from a lovely basked gifted to us by D3’s boyfriend and good conversation. Clean up was fast.
The children, even the older ones, opened their gifts. I think the most memorable thing was as GD2 was opening a gift from Papa and D2 said, “Is that a little banjo?!! I didn’t know they made them!” GD2 knew what is was, my little banjo. Papa found it at the Goldtone booth at IBMA Fanfest last October. We came home from Nashville in October with the little banjo, and a very nice small scale guitar for GD1. I’ve got Murphy Henry’s DVD’s on order for the banjo and guitar, but we did get the mandolin one for GS3 from Red at the Murphy Method booth at FanFest. He’s had the mandolin for a while, and he learned some chords at a festival workshop last spring. He’s going to start violin next year in school, so the mandolin chords won’t hurt him a bit.
Then we piled into our respective vehicles and went to the Henry Ford Museum where all the children sat on Santa’s lap. The place was virtually empty, due to the snow and bad roads, but we didn’t let it dampen our spirits. The little grandchildren made a craft or two at the table, and GD2 checked out all the doll houses again. She loves them, and really notices the details. We had a nice supper at a nearby restaurant, and then D’s family headed home to Kalamazoo. The rest of us drove home and hunkered down, for a quite evening.
