One Year Ends - Another Year Begins

Nine dozen eggs. Or maybe it was 10. Five pounds of butter. About 20 pounds of apples. (We had fried apples, apples dumplings, apples in oatmeal, apple crumble, but mostly we just ate apples. "No peels on mine, Mimi. Remember?") Several gallons of milk. Multiple loaves of bread. Eight boxes of Kleenex. Six boxes of Advil Cold & Flu/Tylenol Cold & Sinus. Countless pots of coffee and cups of tea. (Thankfully people headed home feeling better than when they got here.)

I wish I had counted how many times the dishwasher ran each day and how many times a day the kitchen trash can was emptied. It took a lot to get us through the holidays.

At the height of the holiday there were nine in residence here. Plus, one very big dog. Then a few departed one by one until we were down to six. That family stayed on to celebrate New Year's Eve and a birthday. This afternoon, the last four of our Christmas visitors headed home. Our kitchen is decorated with drawings left "so you won't forget me, Mimi." There are notes still stuck on the bedroom door declaring, "YES: Mimi, Daddy-O, Little Sister." "NO: Baby Girl." Since Baby Girl can't read yet, that didn't accomplish much.

The bedtime books (Underpants For Ants and Pete the Cat: I Love White Shoes) are still stacked by my bed where we ended each day. We would all get in bed...me in the middle and one little girl snuggled on either side and I would read the bedtime story. That was possibly the best time of my day. Because it meant I could go to bed after a long day and MOSTLY because I love reading to them.

Over the past two weeks we had little girl dance concerts in the music room at night. Huge jigsaw puzzles were assembled in record time on the dining room table. Mommy sang a solo at church on Christmas Eve. Santa found the farm and brought gifts for the girls. Christmas Day clay shooting happened again. Folks rode down to the river in the old blue Jeep and found a beaver dam on the creek. Down in the pasture, the little girls and Mommy explored the red barn that used to be a house. There were inside days when it was too cold for outside play. That's when the puppets and the plastic figurines had great adventures. Football games were watched and teams successfully cheered on.

Every dinner ended with "What was your good thing of the day?" It was fun to hear what was each person's favorite thing. Now, before you think everything was perfect, there were little girl tears more than once. Mimi got tired and cranky. (More than once.) But overall it was a good and wonderful family time.

We had our share of minor holiday mishaps that made for some laughs. The big dog took his job of guarding the stash of Christmas gifts a little too seriously and almost didn't let "Santa" get to them. ("Santa" was not the owner of the big dog.) That episode will be talked about for years. We miscalculated cooking times couple of times and had some very late dinners. That made them even more delicious. I underestimated how many hot dogs people would eat one night and they just had to stop when the wieners were gone. They filled up on apple crumble and ice cream instead.

Some major cooking successes included the New Year's Day pork tenderloin and collards and the prune cake baked by my son-in-law. The birthday chocolate pound cake was pretty yummy, too. There was also an excellent standing rib roast on Christmas night and this morning, for their last breakfast, I made a delicious pan of crispy hash browns with leftover baked potatoes. So many meals. I'm sure I've forgotten other good ones.

Tonight floor is clear. There is no castle tent in our den. No little feet running from one end of our long house to the other end, shouting as they go. The quiet is deafening. The kitchen is closed for the next few days. Daddy-O and I will eat whatever is left over. And it will be eaten on paper plates.

We are taking the night off after a busy two weeks. As Daddy-O said today, as the last car pulled out of the driveway, quoting Clark Griswold from the movie National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, "We did it!."