A sincere thank you to all for making the belated Christmas holiday enjoyable. As the years pass and each generation develops their own Christmas tradition, it gets harder to get family and friends together at the same time.
Several years ago, Dominic (and his family) was here for Christmas Eve. There was a short drive around the neighborhood to look at decorative lights and wouldn't you know that Santa came while we were out. During the drive, Dominic saw Santa in the sky (I think it was a local aircraft) and sure enough, when we got home there were presents under the tree. For sure, there was a Santa Claus. There was some help from an elf from Minnesota.
On another Christmas, Mom bravely endeavored to orchestrate a "white elephant" gift exchange. People brought gifts that they didn't want and through a raffle process, "off-loaded" them on other family members. What I remember is that the game got very tense when the gifts suddenly didn't end up in the hands of expected members. Emotions ran high but it was a fun time. Everyone sure got into the game.
This Christmas did not have a specific agenda, but as we got near the end of the gift exchange, there were several extra gifts. As usual the "leader of the pack" (your Mom) figured out a way to distribute the gifts using a process making each person disclose something about themselves that nobody else knew on a slip of paper. Everyone had to guess who made the disclosure as it was read to the group. The winning disclosure, "hands down", was Nana's. Her clue was "I'm the best looking gal here"! Very clever for a 97 year old lady. I'm not sure why it took so long to guess because she was obviously right. I think Keely got credit for figuring out it was Nana..
So another holiday season has come an gone. We created memories as Shelby Jr. would say. Bob Hope would always close, as do I, with "thanks for the memories".
Love,
Dad