This has been a wonderful Christmas. This is my first Christmas as a Grandpa. I didn’t get to have Christmas with Braxton, but we did have Christmas with Miranda. It was so fun to have new members of our family, with whom we can celebrate the birth of the Savior. I was holding Miranda yesterday and thought about what it must have been like to hold the baby Jesus when he was first born. This is a wonderful holiday.
Well, we have the snow, we have the short days (yesterday being the shortest of the year) and the holiday decorations are up. So is the madness called shopping. However, I still look forward to Christmas coming each year. It is a wonderful time to be alive.
No, it’s not Star Wars I am talking about, nor a new season of Battlestar Galactica, or even a new season of 24. No, rather, it is the beginning of yard work at the Hardy household. Yep, it’s that time of the year again, where my Saturday’s have got infinitely more complicated. Yep, it’s up at the crack of dawn so I can mow the lawn, use the weed eater to get those pesty yellow dandelions and other noxious weeds, then the edger to make sure the lawn looks all nice and pretty, and then firing up the sprinkler system to make sure it is working right. Yup, it’s the start up of a 6 month routine of yard work. The lawn mower and I are now going to be best friends.
Of course,this morning was a little bit different from normal. Since I am the Chamber of Commerce President, I did run down to the Old Hillman Field baseball complex and helped with the Annual City Easter Egg Hunt, which is sponsored by the Payson Chamber of Commerce. About an hour of laying out eggs was obliterated by 3 minutes of egg hunting by children, and their parents. What a deal. I am glad it is over.
Additional Job Responsibilites
Just learned this morning while eating you-tyau and bean milk for breakfast that I have two more male responsibilities in addition to those just elucidated. They are, in no order of importance,
4-Open bottles for helpless females
5-Break food items in half that need to be split among individuals for eating.
Now, my day is complete.
Well, wouldn’t you know it, yesterday was the longest day of the year and I almost missed it. I was on my way to the “Manager’s Meeting” that I so like in Orem, when what should I hear but on the radio they were talking about today being the first day of summer. As part of that discussion, they reported on the radio that every year on the first day of summer a whole lot of people tend to show up at Stonehenge in Great Britain, and they see the sun rise. Moreover (and I didn’t understand this part of the report) sometimes they end up having a big fight at that place, on the first day of summer. All I know is that I spent the first day of summer in a golf cart, swinging and chasing a ridiculous ball around the golf course. About the only other thing I can say about that rite of the first day of summer (a golf tournament) is that some people take the game of golf way to seriously. Perhaps they would say of me that I don’t take it seriously enough. I do know that at least six of my golf balls found a permanent resting place, somewhere on that course where I couldn’t find them. Perhaps they were tired of being hit around. I don’t know. I did survive though.
Today is my day. Supposedly, I get pampered all day long. At least since I am not a father of a Primary child in this ward I don’t have a goofy tie on today like the Bishop did. It is going to be interesting to see how many dad are actually wearing those goofy ties. I love my kids, but I do hate goofy ties.