Day Three Hundred Fifty Five 2012

Grandpeeps Shelby and Elijah are out of school for Christmas vacation (winter break for the politically correct). They were here today, amusing themselves watching America’s Funniest Home Videos, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Captain America on Netflix. Shelby was productive and made colorful braided bracelets out of embroidery floss for each holiday. So far, she’s made ten. They’re very pretty.

I was productive, too, and made some cranberry white chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. From scratch. They turned out pretty tasty. Blustery weather here all day—rain and wind and now it’s cold. The grandpeeps are hoping to see some snow. The ground is too warm for it to stick if it did snow, but I wouldn’t mind seeing a few snowflakes. (FYI: today is the last official day of Autumn, although people have been saying it's Winter since before turkey day)

Day Three Hundred Fifty Four 2012

“I bought my brother some gift-wrap for Christmas. I took it to the Gift Wrap department and told them to wrap it, but in a different print so he would know when to stop unwrapping.”

~Stephen Wright

Day Three Hundred Fifty Three 2012

Grandson Elijah looked everywhere for our crazed version of elf on the shelf this afternoon after school and could not find him anywhere—not even upstairs. And then his sister Shelby was surprised to find the elf lurking in the freezer, just waiting for little kids to open it up for a tasty frozen treat, which is usually the first thing Elijah does when he gets here after school each day. He was too freaked out just looking for the elf to even think about grabbing a Bomb Pop. The elf didn’t mind the freezing cold, by the way. After all, he lives at the North Pole. So now he’s moved on. Who knows where he’ll appear next. You better watch out!

Day Three Hundred Fifty Two 2012

Baby, you can drive my car. Beep beep'm beep beep yeah!

Day Three Hundred Fifty One 2012

HAPPY 34TH BIRTHDAY, HOLLY!

My daughter Holly celebrated her 34th birthday today. Here she was at the age of one, sitting on her Grandpa Ranft’s lap. They were pretty good buddies, and I know she’ll appreciate this picture because we were just remembering him today and how he always unclipped his clip on tie and hung it from the front of his shirt when he was done with it.

Happy birthday, dear daughter Holly! So hard to believe our Christmas baby is 34 years old. We wish you all the best of everything today and always. We love you more than you will ever know.