Another Visit To Remember

Another Christmas has come and gone. This year we were able to spend Christmas eve, Christmas day, and the next day with our kids and grandkids. What a blessing. What a great time.

Last year we made the visit early, before Christmas, and had our celebration then. You may remember the story about our granddaughter, then two years old, and the guitar we gave her. Well this year she wanted a doll house (among other things of course) so that's what we got her. But not just any doll house. The Fisher-Price Loving Family Twin Time doll house. It's huge, and comes with a mommy, a daddy and twin babies. It also comes with a couch and chair, cradles for the babies, a cat with cat bed, and patio set. You'd think that would be enough. We didn't think so. We decided she also needed some extra furniture, so we bought two more "rooms" of furniture (kitchen and dining room) and an SUV, complete with radio, horn, twin car seats and bag of groceries. It was hard not to keep going, but we managed to pull ourselves and our dangerously overloaded shopping cart away from the toy aisle nevertheless. We couldn't wait to give it to her.


Well, by the time we reached her house Christmas morning to give her our much anticipated gift, she had already opened several other gifts, including THE PLAY KITCHEN. Now let me explain here that when I was a kid, my absolutely all-time highest dream was a play kitchen set. I mean, the just-my-size kind, not dollhouse size. I remember seeing it in a catalog, probably Sears. I would have fainted dead away if I had found one under the tree. So when I walked into the house and saw hers, (pink fridge, stove and sink, and all retro like the 50's) I lost my breath. After all these years, my little-kid brain is apparently still alive and functioning. I couldn't stop looking at it, examining it, PLAYING WITH IT. I lost all interest in the doll house and would not have blamed Nicki if she had opened it and yawned.


So she opened it and basically yawned. Well, not exactly but after all, it was still in the box, unassembled, and she had to get all the excitement she was going to get by looking at the picture on the outside of the box. But not to worry. We had it all planned that we would spend the next day, that post-Christmas, 'what-are-we-going-to-do-today' day, putting it together with her and putting all the new furniture inside. Good plan. And it was a good plan. I have cute pictures of my husband sitting at the kitchen table with her, instruction booklet visible, and the great mansion of a doll house in the middle of the table, assembly in progress. Cute as can be. It was fun putting it together. It started with Nicki with Grandpa at the table pulling out the sides, and raising the roof (it's Fisher-Price, so it didn't require actual tools or anything. Just a series of unfolding and locking procedures.) Then after I had taken the requisite photos, I joined in and helped figure out how the awnings went on. Then her other Grandma joined in and we all discussed how the flower boxes locked in place and which window got the window treatments that were included, and which room do you think is actually supposed to be the living room. At some point I said, "What do you think, Nicki? Nicki?" And that's when I noticed her sitting in front of the TV watching Barney and Friends. If there had been a thought bubble over her head it would have read, "Let me know when it's finished."

But when it was finished she loved it. She and I played with it for quite a while, she being the mommy doll and me being the daddy. We had a terrific time. It's amazing though how little kids get stuck in a groove of repeating the same things over and over. After about the fifth time of 'let's go to the store in the car', and carefully positioning the mommy and daddy in their SUV seats (with seatbelts of course), and securely fastening the babies into their car seats and then vrooming around the room several times, I was about done. Hey, let's see if Barney's still on TV!

A great visit it was. There are several other brain snapshots that come to mind. Me tugging at the waistband of my brand new jeans that turned out to be a lot lower rise then I first thought, and my oldest step-daughter saying, "yeah, those would drive me nuts too. That waist is so high." And Nicki playing hide and seek, always hiding in the same spot. One of my favorite mental images is when she demanded that Grandpa go hide. We counted to ten, then went into her room to find him and there he was, just standing in the middle of the room with a blanket over him.

Lots of warm memories to keep me company for a long while. I am so grateful for our family, and so blessed to have them all take up residence in my heart.