We’ve had quite the run of germs at our house. First, Andrew had the runny nose, cough, and ear infection. Then Sam got a wicked sore throat that seemed to last for days. Ella has been congested, coughing, not really sleeping and fevers off an on. I have a nasty sinus infection with a cough. It’s not been pleasant!
No parent likes to see their kid sick. Ella has really had it the roughest. She is just miserable. Sam went as far as to say that Ella is like me when I get sick. She’s right. I don’t do sick very well. Ok, honestly, I’m a big baby. All I want to do is sleep. It’s not pretty.
We used real life as inspiration for Twinkles (our Elf on a Shelf) this week.
We were supposed to have some Christmas pictures taken this morning, but with all of us sick, we had to call and cancel. We’re hoping that we might be well enough to do them on Monday, so our photographer moved our appointment. Our fingers are crossed that at least the kids feel better by then.
Rest is best, so I think we’re all going to just hang in pajamas all weekend. Nothing wrong with that, right?
The first episode of the Price is Right hosted by Bob Barker
Gas that only cost 36 cents a gallon
Nacho cheese Doritoes
Time Warner launched HBO
PONG!
Oakland A’s were World Series champs
Dallas Cowboys won Superbowl VI
The Godfather hit movie theaters
My baby brother was born
The story goes something like this – my mom and dad brought my brother home from the hospital after he was born and introduced us. My first response was “I don’t want him. Take him back!” And so begins the relationship of two brothers who couldn’t be more different.
Back in 2019, I asked my brother Christopher to write a little something for this blog. I went back and reread it today and found myself laughing again. It is worth sharing again.
Now that he has been older than me for 13 years (I’m stand on Jack Benny’s position that I am 39!), I wanted to find a special way to salute his 50 years on this planet. So, how about some photographic memories (in as chronological order as I can get):
I’d say the above photo is early 1973. He is obviously still too young to be that big of a problem to me.
This might be 1974. I’m not sure, but it seems like this may have been an outfit my mom liked me in. I think it is the same one I wore in a professional photoshoot.
Sure looks the same to me. Despite the terrible outfits, I love this picture of my brother and me.
Sesame Street was such a big part of our lives. I guess Chris really liked Big Bird. This picture cracks me up because I have mismatched PJ’s on! I may have to revisit this one for a Photo Flashback!
One of the first family photos I remember. We were at my dad’s work open house. Nice shirt, Chris!!
My mom made that ceramic Yoda for my brother for his birthday!
Christmas cheese! This might be the only picture of Santa with both of us. I could be wrong.
HA! We made these hats.
This was a Halloween costume I wore one year. Then they had some play at school and we recycled it for Chris.
I have posted that one before – fishing in Caseville! LOVE this picture – but hate my outfit!
Chris and I in matching shirts at my grandma’s house.
Terrible picture of both of us – but the look on his face cracks me up!
ANOTHER terrible photo!! Not sure about the ugly flannel shirts or our hair!!!
From my first trip to Columbus. I think this was the trip we had professional pictures of us taken for our folks. Thankfully, I cannot find those pictures!!
My aunt and uncle had a place on the lake and had a big picnic every year. Always loved going to them and it was always an added bonus when Chris was able to make it.
Best man at my first wedding.
A favorite photo of my brother, me and my dad – 2010
Again in 2013 – Christmas Eve I think
First anniversary trip in 2019 to Cleveland. My brother met up with us for dinner … somewhere in Ohio!
He’s quite a good Uncle to his niece and nephew. 2020
Family Photo shoot 2021
I have so many wonderful memories with my brother! We had a lot of fun growing up together. In recent years, we’ve become closer and I am grateful for that. I’m proud of his successes and am thankful that we are family. I wish you a wonderful day full of smiles and happiness.
Thank you for being such a wonderful friend, a support, and caring brother. Thank you for loving my family. Thank you for being such an amazing uncle. Thank you for taking us all to Disney (You are doing that, right?!)
Here is to another 50 years! Happy Birthday, Christopher. I love you, always!!
I remember a time when we had Netflix and Hulu and that gave us pretty much every thing we needed to watch movies and TV shows. That’s not the case today. So many “parent companies” are pulling stuff off Netflix to add to their own streaming platform and quite frankly, it ticks me off.
All the NBC shows are now on Peacock, all Star Wars, Pixar and Disney is on Disney +, and so on and so forth. We’ll guess what? I’m not paying for all of them! We’re barely getting by with all of the inflation, gas prices, and life in general! I cannot afford $20 a month here and $15 a month there. The cable bill alone is high enough! To add more streaming services would put us in one big financial hole!
What really angers me is that there are things that I would LOVE to watch, but can’t because there is no way to justify paying for another streaming service. Paramount + has The Offer, a series about the making of the Godfather. I would love to see it. HBO Max has the new Christmas Story movie, which I hear is great! My list goes on and on. I just cannot in good conscience pay for something that I will only use to watch one or two shows.
The TV shows I would binge watch, well, many of them I have on DVD. I can pop them in whenever I want to. It seems to be more worth buying them outright at $40 and watching them for years that to pay $20 a month and maybe not even get the chance to watch them. And when you have them on DVD, you get the bonus features that don’t show up on streaming.
Actor Jack Palance once said, “The only two things you can really depend upon are gravity and greed.” The fact that there are almost as many streaming services as there are cable channels makes me sick. I’m sorry greedy streaming company – you aren’t getting my money every month.
I suppose I will hope that the one or two things I want to watch on their platform will end up on DVD soon …
My grandma was no Clark Griswold in the outdoor Christmas Decorations Department. Inside, though, she used to really go all out. Well, at least she did before she moved to her condo.
She had a large mantle along the fireplace that she decorated every year. She had Christmas trees, reindeer, a Santa sleigh, angels, and more. On both sides of the fireplace, there were cement “pads” (really the only way I can think to describe them). She usually placed a small Christmas tree on each side and surrounded them with more trinkets. I know I had pictures of just the mantle somewhere, but can’t seem to find it. However, you get the basic idea from this cheesy photo of my brother and me.
One of the trinkets was a plastic mouse that had hair on the head. The hair made it look like one of those toy trolls. It never made sense to me as to why she always had that in there. I asked her one year and she explained that she had been sick or in the hospital one time and my folks sent her some flowers or a plant or something … from me. The mouse was part of the bouquet and she kept it. Sadly, it is one of the things that have disappeared and no one knows where it went.
As years went by, many of the same decorations were there. Note the Mrs. Santa Clause to the right of the Millennium Falcon box below. It always seemed to be out. This particular year, there was a set of shelves next to the TV. On top of it was her manger scene (behind my brother on the left). The silver star lit up above the baby Jesus. This may have been the manger set my mom made in ceramics, I can’t be sure.
For as long as grandma was in her house on Huntington, every Christmas she would hang these melted plastic decorations up on the wall. These were very popular in the 1970’s I guess. She had Santa in a sleigh being pulled by 9 reindeer….all Rudolph because that was all they made.
Those plastic decorations were something we had at our house, too. I remember the snowman, the Christmas tree, waving Santa, and the wreath. I did a search online and found that there were quite a bit of them. There were even some made for Thanksgiving and Easter.
In her front room, there was usually her big tree (eventually it was the ceramic one my mom made for her) right in the center of the front window and some garland around pictures. There might have been a wreath on the door, too. We didn’t go in this room much. It was the “fancy” room. Most of the breakable stuff was in there. Here are my grandparents in there around 1967-1968.
Bells and Clowns
I’m not sure what made me remember this particular decoration, but it was one of two very annoying things that grandma brought out every year. It was a simple, clear, red plastic bell that played music. It didn’t look anything like the bell in the video below.
I tried to search for it online and I found something similar to the one grandma had, but it isn’t THE one. Grandma’s was just a bell with a Christmas light inside of it that lit up in synch with the electronic music that was playing. I found this clip on YouTube which is almost the exact same music.
The missing holiday favorite from the clip is Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Grandma’s bell played it and when it did the Christmas light inside blinked like it was a strobe light. It always made my grandma laugh. It made us laugh, too, the first couple times we heard it. After that it got annoying. She would turn it on and you’d have to listen to the first 7 or 8 carols before Rudolph played. When it did, she’d crack up. It was obnoxiously annoying.
The second annoying “decoration” she had was this scary looking clown doll. Now, what this clown had to do with Christmas I will never know. It wasn’t even dressed in Christmas colors.
This ugly thing would sit somewhere near the fire place among the rest of the decorations. Throughout each of our visits, grandma would walk over, pick it up and press the belly. Inside the clown was a “laugh box.” It would laugh for 20-30 seconds and it would crack my grandma up.
You can see the pure joy on her face in the above picture. To a degree, the laugh kind of reminded me of how my grandpa laughed, so maybe that is why she loved it so much. Every video I found on YouTube of the clown laughing, it sounds speeded up. I did, however find a video of just the laugh box and it plays at the speed my grandma’s clown laughed.
Imagine hearing that 4-5 times during an hour visit! I was always glad when that clown finally got put away!
As annoying as they were, I’d give anything to be able to go back to the days of that clown and that bell! So many Christmas memories involved my grandparents. Whether it was my mom’s folks …
… or my dad’s folks ….
I’d put up with those annoying sounds for however long I had to – just to have a few more minutes with them again!
I swore up and down that I would never do the whole Elf on the Shelf thing. Sometimes, however, circumstances make you go back on your word.
My mother-in-law sent home an Elf on the Shelf before Thanksgiving. So now, we’re in it to win it. Ok, we’ll do the best we can to make it happen!
The story (as I’ve heard it) behind this whole thing is that some kids wondered how Santa could know how kids were bad or good. The answer? He sends these “scouting” elves to the homes of children to watch them. At bedtime, they go back to the North Pole and report to Santa. They return before morning and find a different place to keep an eye on the children. The child cannot touch the elf, or it loses its magic and may not return. This could easily get them on the naughty list!
As a parent, it’s our job to find a creative place to place the elf every night. You have no doubt seen many of the humorous things people have come up with. Some are not very kid friendly.
The story says that once the child names their elf, they get their magic and officially become part of the family. After some discussion Ella passed on Snowflake and instead decided on Twinkle (which has since become Twinkles).
A buddy of mine noted that from far away, you can’t really tell if the elf is a boy or a girl. Close up you can see ours is a girl.
And for those who still want to question it … it says she is a girl right on the box!
Anyway, we watched a short movie on Netflix with Ella and Andrew, read the book that told the story, and then they were off to bed. Day 1 was a simple one. Right above the fireplace on the mantle.
Twinkles and her snowman buddy
Day 2’s idea was found in the internet. We grabbed one of her mini Nana blankets to make it work. Twinkles camped out in the fridge.
Chilly, but elves are used to that, right?!
Sam worked the next night, so it was up to me to think of what to do. This may or may not have been influenced by an action movie or two. Twinkles was zip lining to the Christmas tree.
For day 4, I wanted to have her hanging from the ceiling fan, but the bucket/cup I put her in kept tipping and she’d fall out. Instead, I used the cup and hung her from the magnetic clip on the side door. It kinda looks like the hot air balloon ride went wrong and she crash landed on the clip.
This morning, on Facebook, my friends Matt and Tricia posted that they got an elf for their son. I immediately commented and told them I was glad that there would be someone I could steal ideas from!
The elf goes “home” Christmas Eve … feel free to share your ideas, too!! Kid friendly, of course.
Before Thanksgiving, there was a perfect 70 degree day. That was the day I should have put the Christmas lights up outside. I didn’t. Thankfully, I took advantage of a breezy 50ish degree day and was outside rigging up the lights.
After I finished, the following conversation took place between my wife and me:
Sam: Uh, what’s that big bunch of wires wrapped to the post?
Me: So, there was a strand of lights where only half were lighting up. Those are the ones that didn’t light up!
Sam: That really looks bad
Me:. No one’s gonna see those from outside. Especially in the dark!!
Man logic.
I was not about to go through bulb by bulb to check them. (I actually swapped out the first bulb that was out, but when it didn’t work, I was done with that!). And I certainly wasn’t going to buy an entire new strand of lights! I had already gone through the countless strands and replaced those bulbs that were physically broken. That took enough of my time.
So behind a post, there is a bunch of bulbs wrapped together … And out of site from anyone looking at it from the front.
These don’t work!
When all is said and done, it looks good at night!
Side porch. Lit up and festive.
I really need to do more in the front of the house. I always feel like it’s not enough.
Front porch
The ground was already hard, so I couldn’t get the stakes in for the large Christmas bulbs we usually put out. So their absence already makes it look “half done.”
I really need to get a big ladder. We don’t have one. I’m sure I could probably borrow one from a neighbor, but I never ask. I would love to do up along the roof. Those icicle lights would probably look good and can’t be that hard to hang.
Here is just another reason I love our neighborhood.
Our neighborhood has a Facebook page. We can all communicate with each other on it. This is the same page where I found out a neighbor needed their lawn mowed a while back. It is also the page that we found out about a neighbor girl was selling lemonade one hot summer day. It is such a neat way for us all to keep in touch.
Last week, a neighbor posted that “Santa’s mailbox” was up once again in her yard. Kids in the neighborhood could write their letters to Santa and drop them in the box. Our neighbor said that each letter would be answered by Old St. Nick!
Ella had me help her write her (and Andrew’s) letter. After I wrote the letter, she drew some pictures to include in the envelope. I addressed the envelope and we took a short walk to drop it off.
We were instructed to put in in a plastic bag, just in case it was wet outside. It was a short walk and she was always a few steps ahead of me!
It wasn’t long before we spotted the house and the mailbox.
I asked if she wanted me to help her, but she knew exactly what to do!
She did need a bit of help getting the door back on … It popped off as she was putting her envelope in it.
And just like that – her letter was set to go to the North Pole!
I am excited to see the response. Our neighbor said that ours was their first letter. We really have some amazing neighbors.
Any letter we got from Santa always looked like my dad’s handwriting! One year, we got a Santa letter from my grandma…..and my dad. I think they told us Santa has a lot of secretaries or something to get us to stop asking questions.
I can’t wait for her to get a response. I love the holidays!
The holiday weekend is winding down and I hope that you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Ours was a good day filled with great food and family.
The day started with a quick game of hide and seek.
We watched the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. The kids loved seeing Josh from Blue’s Clues and Bluey in the parade!
After breakfast, we prepared the deviled eggs to bring. Sam said she didn’t have paprika. She chuckled when I told her I never liked when my mom put it on the deviled eggs! Then we all started to get ready to go to Sam’s mom’s for dinner.
The loss of my sister-in-law, Grace, is still very fresh. It helped to have family together. There was a lot of love and great conversation throughout the day.
We had an amazing dinner, prepared by my mother-in-law: turkey, mashed potatoes, mac and cheese and so much more. There was no shortage of desserts either!
The Detroit Lions actually gave us a good game to watch, despite losing in the last 23 seconds. It would have been nice to see them win their fourth in a row.
I got to finally meet my newest niece, Arabella. She is a little cutie! She’s only a few months old, but she’s almost as big as Andrew!
I dropped the ball this year and didn’t really take many pictures. My sister in law snapped a candid of the family as we were leaving which I just love.
I love it because it is typical chaos. It looks like Sam is asking me something and I am oblivious. Ella is waving and Andrew is like, “can we just go home now?”
We came home and relaxed the rest of the night, just enjoying family time.
As I turned off the lights and headed off to bed, I reflected again o just how thankful I am for my wonderful family.
In December of 2019, I took part in The Happy Holidays Blogathon. For that event, I chose to write about one of my favorite holiday specials – The Year Without a Santa Claus. This special is obviously a favorite for many other people, too. I say that because every year since I posted it, it has been one of the Top 10 most read blogs on my site.
For new followers, here is a link to that original post:
Recently, on Facebook, I was able to connect with Rick Goldschmidt. He is the official historian and biographer of Rankin Bass productions. He has written quite a few books about some of the beloved holiday specials as well as a book about all of them. I am currently saving up some money to get the 20th Anniversary Edition of The Enchanted World of Rankin/Bass.
In messaging back and forth, I saw that a soundtrack for The Year Without a Santa Claus was available. I received one from Rick with autographed photos of Snow Miser and Heat Miser. I popped the CD in my car and was blown away at the sound quality.
The great thing about this CD is that it not only includes the songs from the show, it also includes the background music. I loved every minute of it!! If you are a fan of this holiday special, you can inquire about getting a copy of the soundtrack, books, and more at the following website:
Rick has been busy getting items out for Christmas, and I am sure that you can nab something for the Rankin/Bass fan on your Christmas list from the site.
Rick wrote a piece that is featured in the December issue of Remind magazine about Paul Coker Jr. Paul was the guy who designed some of the most memorable Rankin/Bass characters, including the Miser Brothers. It is on newsstands now and available for you to check out.
Thanks again, Rick, for the photos and soundtrack! Thanks for keeping the characters of these holiday specials alive for years to come!
Time for another edition of the Friday Photo Flashback. Today, we go back to May of 1987 to the annual Band Banquet.
I stumbled on the above photo in a stack of pictures from my dad. I realize that the photo is a bit blurry, but if you look carefully, you will see that I have a conductor’s baton sticking in my shirt collar. This was just one of many things our band director, Tom Shaner, used to do.
If you are not familiar with the story, I blogged about it when Mr. Shaner passed away. Here is an excerpt from that blog:
My junior year of high school, the band officers were discussing the agenda for the annual Band Banquet. We needed one more speech, so I said I’d get up and do an imitation of Mr. Shaner. That night I was nervous. I got up and started my speech by saying “The longer you’re in band, the more Mr. Shaner starts to grow on you…” with that I ducked under the podium and threw on a bald cap. I then put a baton in the back of my shirt collar like he did. I “yelled” about how nobody practiced, talked about retiring and some of the other things he used to say. As the laughter died down, I realized I hadn’t written an “out”. I went on to thank Mr. Shaner for the many times he opened his office to listen to me talk about life, and issues I was dealing with. I don’t recall all I said, but I got pretty emotional and ended by telling him I loved him. He got up and we hugged. Somewhere I have a picture of that moment.
I actually found that photo, too!
Back to the first photo. We did our band banquets at this little VFW Hall every year. I remember the sound system being just awful. If you touched the microphone the wrong way, it became all static and no one could understand what you were saying. The set up for the banquet was pretty much the same every year. The officers all sat up front and each of us had a responsibility. Some gave out awards, others gave out letters, some introduced speakers, etc.
As I look at this photo, Joe is wearing sunglasses to my right. I can’t remember exactly why he was wearing them. He may have had his eyes dilated or something. To my left is our band president (who sadly just passed away unexpectedly) Ingrid. You really can’t see her, however, it looks like she is covering her face. I guess I’d like to think she’s covering her face saying to herself, “Oh my gosh, why did we let him talk!?” To her left is Ron, our second drum major. I love that he is cracking up in the picture. His laugh was so boisterous!
This is one of those times I wish I still had the video of this, or at least a panoramic picture of the officer’s table. There was a lot of laughter that year, and Mr. Shaner waited a full year to get me back. You can read about that and him here:
These two photos remind me of such a fun time. Those band banquets were such fun. After dinner and all of the awards and speeches, there was a live band that played music all night. There was plenty of dancing and many laughs. It was always a very special night for us.
Various Ramblings of a Nostalgic Italian 