Happy Things, Home Edition

• Sales tax-free shopping
• Being back in the ConVal gym for basketball games--the familiar sights and sounds
• Enthusiastic (um, wild) student fans (at a Tuesday night game, too!)
• Discussing the ConVal games afterward--and hearing Kayla do it, too--a long-standing Sandford tradition
  
• Finding good deals on Christmas gifts
• Christmas packages in the mail from unexpected people (like Kippany)
• Making omelet breakfasts
• Grammie telling Kayla and me that she needed to stay awake all night to keep watch, because she was the "oldest in the house." "Indeed you are," I had to agree.
  
• "I plead the fifth . . . It's the fifth, isn't it?" --Cherilyn B., at the Sandford family brunch
  
• Trying to get Doug and Jose to sing "Down the Ages Afar" with the rest of the Sandfords
• Uncle Earl telling about how Peter R. approached him last summer, looked at his stomach, and announced, "You need to exercise!"
• Having it become a family tradition to watch Chad in "A Christmas Carol"
• Talking to Craig twice in a week--and the ease of calling him on his cell phone
• Talking to Ruthie again, for the first time in a long while!
• New Hampshire accents
• Small-town post offices
• New England architecture
• Christmas lights
• Our hot-as-Hades house, thanks to a healthy wood stove (I should have brought home short sleeves)
  
• Watching Andy Griffith, a Mom favorite because she thinks Don Knotts is so funny
• My tiny room with the pink wallpaper and green carpet that I've never gotten tired of
• Good books