Math equation for tonight.

What is 4 x 1.

Nope. Not four. Before you guess again, perhaps I should clarify the equation.

What are four grandkids, visiting our house…. in one day?
Answer…. Priceless. To Infinity and Beyond.

Today was a stellar day, I’ll tell you. Some days are like that. It was better than pancakes with warm maple syrup and melted butter. Better than Baby Koala Bears. Heck…. even better than Sock Monkeys on a Ferris Wheel.   Yessssiiirrrreeee.

This afternoon… and evening…. we decorated Christmas ornaments like it was nobody’s business.

I don’t mean to be a braggart….. but boy oh boy…. do we ever have a way with glitter, glue, and paint! Actually, more ended up on the floor than on the ornaments. It was like a reverse of the Sistine Chapel Ceiling. Sorta.

Plus, we added a big spill of a Sprite… just to make extra, extra sure things were really sticking.

A sidebar about the History of Ornaments…..

Folks in Europe started decorating trees, with apples and such… during the 15th & 16th centuries.

Yet….. Christmas wasn’t widely celebrated in the United States until the 1800s…. mostly because of the Puritans’ influence.   Because of this…. decorated trees did not become widely popular until people saw the ornaments brought to America by families emigrating from Germany and England.  This was in the 1840s.

Ornaments became a big hit. F.W. Woolworth (The mogul of five-and-dime fame) had reluctantly stocked his stores with German-made ornaments in 1880.

It paid off for the old boy.  By 1890, he was selling $25 million worth of ornaments at nickel and dime prices.

Okay… BACK to OUR house.  A pot of Chili…. and all seemed very right with the world.

You know, sometimes I get overwhelmed with the things that are not going right in the world. Way overwhelmed.

But it is days like these that make it all seem so upright and good.
And I am thankful for that.

I am grateful that Santa talked the Puritans into a bowl of Egg Nog.  And…..I am very glad…. that I am so adept in mathematic equations. I like when it all adds up.

“Where we love is home – home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.” -Oliver Wendell Holmes

“Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.” – Immanual Kant