A Thanksgiving story

We traveled to Springfield, Illinois (birthplace of Abraham Lincoln) to spend Thanksgiving with my husband's side of the family. It was a momentous occasion, because we were all there, together, for the first time in five years, and we gathered to bid farewell to Shawn's sister Wendy and her family. Her husband, John, is taking a job teaching "Ethics and Government" at Oxford University in England. They are leaving on December 30, and they will be there for five years.

Here they are with their two children, Micah (age 8) and Hannah (age 5).



Hannah is quite the character. She reveled in her position of "youngest-everything." She climbed on her big cousins, hunted them down in hide-and-seek, made them dress, undress and redress a hapless scurvey-legged doll, and demanded the reading of many books.

Here is Hannah reading a book.


Hannah particularly liked David, in perhaps the way cats always seem to "like" me (me, the one with the cat phobia). David does not particularly care for small children. He has even gone so far as to say he can't stand them. However, Hannah found his large, well-muscled body perfect for romping on--he always caught her every time she jumped or rolled or otherwise threw her tiny body at him. If I didn't know better, I'd say she gave him about as good a workout as he gets at the gym.

Oh, and she wanted him to read to her. She brought him a picture book, some silly Disney-Christmas-lift-the-flap kind of non-literature type deal, which was OK with DJ, because there were harldly any words to bother about.

They got to a page where each Disney character was bringing something to put on the Christmas tree, and you had to lift the flaps to see what each one brought.

They got to Daisy Duck, and Hannah held the flap down. "I know this one!" she told David, "I've did this one before. You have to guess. Guess what Daisy brought! I'll give you a hint... it begins with a w-w-w sound."

DJ thought and thought. He could not think of anything that Daisy would put on a Christmas tree that began with the w-w-w sound. "I just can't figure it out," he told Hannah.

Triumphantly she lifted the flap and announced, "It's WIBBONS!"

(You know, those long red ones that you use to tie up packages... DJ would never have thought of that. His sisters do his Chistmas wrapping for him, and with his crew cut, wibbons just aren't part of the daily routine.)