The Perfect Gift

Our family has many traditions. In recent years, due to an every expanding family, we have adopted a new one-our own version of secret or dirty santa. We still get gifts for the "children" as long as they are babies or in school/college or single if they choose to be left out of the "santa" present game. Well, sometimes it can be a challenge to find gifts that are good gifts and fit within our set price range. We don't do "dirty" gifts and we don't do "silly" gifts. We give good/useful gifts. This year we scaled the price down to $10.00 per gift. Now, if you can find a $20.00 gift on sale for $10.00 that's a good deal too, all the way around. This year I purchased 4 gifts for the game as I do each year so that everyone can play. There are 13 or 14 of us that play. Well, I had no problem finding the first 3 gifts but the 4th one was giving me problems. It's just hard to find something exciting and useful and something anyone would like to have...for $10.00. While I was out doing my final day of shopping, and feeling the pressure of that last santa gift looming over me, well, I walked into Bass Pro Shop and there it was on a big display! The perfect gift for our Santa game. It was unique. It was $10.00. It was glass and not plastic! And who wouldn't want one? Maybe you've seen them...the Guzzler tea mason? It's a glass to drink out of made from a mason jar with a straw. Now, it wasn't the moonshine one. We don't tend to drink too much in our family or the ones who do may just be closet drinkers. Anyway, this one was for tea. I was so proud. I wished I had gone to Bass Pro first and then I could have bought two and maybe it would have worked out where a husband and a wife could have each gotten a guzzler and had a matched pair. Well, the big night came and we drew our numbers and the game began. My niece picked the present I had so skillfully wrapped that held the mason sipper and I could hardly wait to see how excited she would be to get it. Well, I was shocked when what I expected to be a look of delight ended up being a look of something a little less than thrilling. I mean, it was PERFECT! Huh, well, maybe she was just too young to understand how this was a real conversation piece and such a novel way to sip a nice cold glass of sweet tea!!! I was the lucky player in the game and I had the final number. Well, when it got my turn I stole that mason jar sipper from my niece since it was evident that she just plain didn't appreciate it. Why, she didn't even seem upset that I snatched it away! And of all things, I heard my brother who is only 6 years younger than me remark, "I would have never seen that coming" when I took the gift from her. I don't know what was wrong with any of them but I couldn't really blame it on age now that he went and blabbered something like that and him being so close to my age and all!!! My niece decided to take the remaining gift which was, of all things, a sack of lightbulbs! Lightbulbs! Who buys lightbulbs for a Christmas santa gift game? And I heard her say, "well, at least they are useful". I guess she was implying that my mason jar drink glass wasn't. After nearly a week, I still don't understand why anyone wouldn't want that mason jar glass and I am glad it is at home here with me where somebody appreciates it. My husband was the only one who seemed to understand except he was a little confused. He thought I got it back so I could give it to him!!! Hum. I guess the value of such a unique gift just went right over the rest of their heads!!! Why, we used to drink from jelly jars!!! I am still quite happy with my Mason Jar Sweet Tea Guzzler...and I'll still be sipping from it long after those ole lighbulbs have burned out and been discarded! My Grandma always said beauty was in the eye of the beholder. We just don't all like the same things. What I thought was perfect, unique, and fun...well, didn't hold a candle to a bag of (gulp)lightbulbs! I think maybe my dad would have also liked the sipper. Wonder if Bass Pro has any left?

Meet my new granddaughter

We were blessed to receive our beautiful granddaughter on July 18th. Our little bundle arrived pretty much as the doc had said she would. Today she is almost two weeks old and ventured to our house for a little birthday get together for her aunt Lori. Her two brothers love her dearly and can't seem to get enough of her sweet sugars! Soon school will start and bring with it a year of change. Both boys will be scurrying off to school and baby Emmalyn and I will embark on our new adventure together. After years of bugs and toy tractors and super hero antics, I will have dolls and tea sets, bows and ribbons to get used too. The last time there was a little girl in the house was 17 years ago when my niece came into our world! Oh the sweet memories I have of my own dear grandmother and with her as my inspiration I will march right in and tackle cookie baking and barbies and now and then still bait a hook or two or build forts with lincoln logs!

Granddaddy

For 5 years and 8 months of my life I was blessed with a wonderful man I called Granddaddy. He wasn't a flashy man with a flashy truck and the home he built for his family wasn't fancy. It didn't take any of that "stuff" to make him the best granddaddy in the whole wide world. Granddaddy most often wore a hat, and in my hazy web of memories I can still see him in a flannel shirt. I remember his mule and can still see him behind the plow; that old cantankerous mule leading the way. To this day I can walk right to his favorite fishing spot. He often walked with a cane and could flick aside a snake with one whisk! I can still see him sitting at the table in the kitchen waiting on Grandma to get the biscuits out of the oven. He liked juicy fruit gum and orange slices and chocolate drops. He wasn't opposed to dipping sugar right out of the sugar bowl and into his mouth. He loved to whittle and the shavings sometimes seemed to reach the arm of the chair! He raised beagles. He held my hand while together we turned the crank to the corn sheller and then he let me throw out the corn to the chickens! He loved his family, his land, his life. There are times when I can still see him laying on the table he used for scaling fish, under the trees...napping. Some say he was an odd man. Not really liking company very much and prone to do a disappearing act when any came near. Others say there was never a more honest man that ever walked the earth and that he was good to them when he didn't have to be. His life was hard. As a small boy he was burned in a fire and later he suffered a nearly fatal water moccasin bite. Both times he had to learn to walk again. A black man, who remained his friend all of his life, carried him on his back until he could get on his feet again. He went to war and suffered mumps while in a fox hole in France. He said he'd never been so sick in all of his life. An accident, while cutting logs, left him broken and bleeding. The same black man brought him home for Grandma to mend. When this dear friend that had been through so much with him died, my granddaddy wept and carried a wreath of flowers to place on his grave. In the end diabetes and a bad heart did to my granddaddy what fire, and snakes and hard work couldn't but not before my brother and I shared chocolate covered cherries with him on his sick bed. I've been told the doctor had to "convince" him to go to the hospital. He knew he would never come home to that place he dearly loved. He fought going as long as he could. In those final days as he slipped between knowing and not knowing he told my mother how much he loved my brother and me and how he wished he could see us one last time and hear his beagles once again. I saw his death through the eyes of a child. Calmly accepting that Granddaddy was with the angels up there in heaven among the clouds. I suspect he got to listen to his beagles as he was lifted up and I pray that he felt my tiny arms around his neck, squeezing tight as I whispered in his ear one last time, "I love you granddaddy." I can only pray that someday there will be those who think of me in just such a way as I hold my granddaddy's hand once again and together we smile down from heaven and embrace those we love....