Packing Up!

Hi, everyone!

There’s a lot of packing up we have to do in each new year!  The first Sunday in January, I helped Grandma start to put away the Christmas decorations.  The garland is always the last decoration to go on the Christmas tree, and it’s the first decoration to come off.  I helped Grandma wind it up and put it away.  Then, we started to take the ornaments off the Christmas tree.  This year, Grandma used a basket to collect a bunch at a time.  When the basket was full, I helped her unload the ornaments onto the dining room table for sorting.  Some of them have special places in the storage boxes!  I made sure to let my favorite moose ornament know when it was time for him to go into the basket!

We got all the ornaments off the tree, then Grandpa took the lights off.  This year’s tree didn’t drop very many needles at all, but we still wrapped it up in a tarp to take it out to the street.  Meanwhile, Grandma started packing  up some of the ornaments and decorations.

Monday morning, when I got up, I could hear somebody using a chainsaw!  The town sent a bucket truck around the street to trim branches that were hanging over the roadway.  Between the pile of branches and the chipper truck, the road was blocked for a while!  Guess what?  The town picked up our Christmas tree, too, and put it in the chipper!

For the rest of Monday, I helped Grandma pack up the rest of the Christmas decorations.  It’s a big job, but we finally got the table cleared and everything put away!

Tuesday started chilly and misty, but Grandma decided to take down the lights on the apple trees in the afternoon.  She finished after sunset!  I helped her rewind the light strands neatly on their storage cards.  Two sections of lights never lit all season, so Grandpa stretched them out in the living room to figure out what the problem was.  Tuesday night, I watched the light on the pole lamp replacing the apple tree lights.

Wednesday morning, I woke up to snow on the ground!  It melted in a day or so, but Grandma said she was glad she already had the lights off the apple trees!  When we went to the bay on Friday, there was no snow on the ground.  There was open water all over the bay.  It was very cold overnight Friday, and there was a thin coat of ice on the bay when I got up.  Gulls and swans and geese and eagles were swooping and landing in the middle of the bay.  I wonder what they thought when they landed on ice, instead of water?

When we came back from the bay last Saturday, Grandma said it was time to start making Groundhog Day cookies!  The first kinds we made were snowy apricot bars and chocolate caramel crunch bars!  I helped make the base layer for the apricot bars, then I cut up the apricots that go in the topping layer.  Then we made a batch of butter brickle bars, too!  While the cookies were baking, I helped Grandma make an eggnog cake!  We do that every year after Christmas to use up the eggnog left from making stollen frosting.!  The cake was yummy for dessert!  After dinner, I helped Grandma cut the baked cookies into bars.  Then she wrapped each bar in plastic wrap and put them all in the freezer.

On Sunday, I helped Grandma make another batch of chocolate caramel crunch bars (so Uncle Steven could have some), peanut butter bars and chocolate chip cookie bars.  I helped her with some of the wrapping, but the plastic wrap always sticks to my paws!

Yesterday, Grandma made the final batches of Groundhog Day cookies — brownies with and without nuts.  Grandpa was surprised she could still find space in the freezer to store them!  The cookie boxes take up an entire shelf!  Today, I helped Grandma weigh all the cookie boxes.  That helps her figure out how many Groundhog Day care packages she can send.  The total weight was thirty pounds!

Because of the bad virus, Grandma will have to pack the Groundhog Day care packages without the help of the Packer-san family.  I’ll help her as much as I can!

Love,

Lion-san