Confessions of a Grandma

Well, my family gathered yesterday and, while everyone noticed that the house was a bit more bare than usual, it did not have much of an impact on the festivities.  The adults were focused on food and conversation and the children were busy with drawing,  decorating gingerbread boys (which was a fun activity that came in ever so handy to settle them down a bit when things got really rambunctious), and then opening some presents.  By then, it was pretty impossible to notice anything but sheer excitement and wrapping paper swirling through the air.  Kristen and Dane made this tree for me.  One nephew had just returned from Afghanistan, but he did not attend last night because he was on his way to a Giants football game.  My two nieces and another nephew have moved out of state.  It just doesn't seem that long ago that they all were the source of frenzied anticipation for the pile under the tree.  The older of my two brothers now is i...

My mother--using my paternal grandmother's recipe, I must note-- made a killer lemon pie.   I do not consider lemon pie a traditional Christmas dessert.  We always had an English Christmas pudding--made with suet and raisins and a fair amount of whiskey in the sauce--also courtesy of my paternal grandmother--as a Christmas Day dessert served late in the evening.  However, the family lemon pie making seems to have fallen in my lap and last Christmas a nephew was visibly crushed when I failed to serve a lemon pie at the family Christmas gathering.  Needless to say, I will be getting up with the sun (which lets me sleep quite late this time of year) to make a lemon pie for the dinner tomorrow.  We don't get together the way we did when my parents were still alive. I'm hoping the family will also appreciate my effort to make the pierogis this year.  I am not making my mother's kolache or the nut bread, though.  It's funny how holiday dinners did not ...

Okay, after my family Christmas gathering a few years ago, I was loading up the dish washer. It was quite late. I was quite tired. I had been planning, and shopping, and cooking for a few days. The party was pleasant. I enjoyed a glass of wine (or two, or maybe even three) throughout the evening. Mike was going to bed, but I wanted to get the dish washer started. He watched me squirt the Dawn dish washing liquid into the dish washing machine and apparently had the thought that something was not right but only managed to say, "see you in the morning." I went downstairs (we live in a raised range style house) to sit by the dwindling fire in our den, sip that last glass of wine, and reflect on the satisfaction of a family that can get together, share a meal , and have a nice time enjoying each others' company. I remember that the 11 o'clock news was coming on when I started to hear "drip, drip, drip." I went to investigate and saw water dripping from t...

This morning we could not find the remote controls for either one of our two television sets. Since we had my family Christmas gathering yesterday and the three kids in attendance were fleetingly watching Sponge Bob Squarepants at some point during the evening, we started looking in the places that a two or three year old might have dropped something like a remote. We looked under cushions and under furniture. We looked behind furniture and in cupboards, drawers, bags, boxes, shoes, laundry baskets, wastepaper baskets, coat pockets. Honestly, I looked in the toilet tank. We found them after about six hours of sporadic searching--one behind the lamp on the table next to the den couch and one on the bedroom bureau behind the swivel mirror--obviously not places a toddler would carelessly drop them! They must have been hidden by an adult concerned about unsupervised TV watching. I love my family Christmas get together. That's the real holiday for me. Too bad there is always an associ...