Loose Leaf Notes

At our annual Christmas Eve kahlua and cookie neighborhood open house, we swapped and talked, sipped and dipped and made merry.   Joe got a cell phone soap on a rope and there was a talking toy parrot that used the f-word alot.

I knew that my grandson Bryce (pictured behind his sister Kaylee) would have the gingerbread man ornament off the tree as soon as he found it. A toy soldier chased the gingerbread man and a glittered bird ornament played the role of the fox.

The stockings were filled by Ho Ho Hopa Joe with buffalo jerky, gingerbread molasses cookies, apples, tangerines and scratch tickets.  He’s been filling stockings this way since our own boys were little and we’ve yet to have a big winner.

I missed some of the swapping because I was lying down with Byrce, who was talking to me about vampire bats and zombies as he almost drifted off to sleep.  “They suck your blood,”  he said convincingly.

When the Zephyr Farm guests first started to arrive Hopa Joe introduced some of them to Bryce and Bryce said, “Hopa, you have a lot of friends.”  He also explained to his Hopa the difference between a pretend Santa (someone real pretending) and fake one (pictured in the background.)

Bryce played the Yankee Swap and guarded the hunting earmuffs and cap he got so no one would take them.  Baby Liam was strutting around the party like a little man with a plan.  He had a Christmas ribbon tied around his waist and at one point it looked like he was about to climb into a gift bag.

We missed Josh who had to work.   He called and we got Bryce to sing Frosty the Snowman over the phone to cheer him up.  “That almost makes it worse,” said the homesick uncle.  Josh arrived on Christmas Day and had dinner with us.  We said a blessing before we ate and Josh revealed his new motto, which we toasted to:  “2012 … It’s not the end of the world.”