January 1, 2016 - Friday
14 degrees/cloudy/calm
Pentoga Road

Happy New Year! I'm wondering where 2015 went and now, here it is, 2016. Seems I just got used to writing 2015 rather than 2014 and with the quickening passage of time, I have to reteach my fingers to move on to yet another year. No wonder so much of my life is spent in a dazed and confused manner. It's the way I roll.

Thursday was The Day of the Grady. I was up early and soon joined by Mom. It wasn't long before Sargie and Grady came down the stairs and after that, all normalcy flew out the window.

Diddle diddle dumpling...
One slipper off and the other slipper on
Playing with his favorite toy, a flashlight.

We spent Thursday playing and pounding the bottom of an old oatmeal box while singing, "Pow Wow, the Indian Boy." (Anyone else remember that ditty from the Captain Kangaroo days?)

Later in the day, Grady and I went outside to take down the Christmas lights. 

Forgot the snow boots? No problem. Bread bags over shoes work just fine.

We also took advantage of a sleigh made by his Great Grandpa Milligan for one of his uncles and I pulled Grady through the woods, across the road to Neighbor Mike's, and back into the woods again.



I noticed Grady had fallen asleep. We were heading back home when the sleigh ran up onto a large rock and tipped over. Golly, that kid is tough. He spilled out and landed face down in the snow, but never awakened. I righted the sleigh, tucked the little guy back in, and we made our way back without him ever knowing he'd made a face-down snow angel. 



And so our day went. 



Grady entertained his Great Grandma and Grandma Sargie, often having both of them laughing and carrying on.





 The kid's a real entertainer.

I can't hear you

When it was nap time, he crawled up on his Grandpa's lap, stretched out, and snoozed for a couple of hours. Grandpa might have done the same. 

He keeps growing and Grandpa will be laying on him.

Macrea and Grady left late yesterday afternoon. Grandma Sargie will pick up Grady after work on Saturday and he'll be with us again until Monday morning. 

Ah, New Year's Eve. You could feel the excitement in the air. I took three drum sticks (ice cream cones) from the freezer around 9:30 and we celebrated like the party animals we're known to be. The last of the lights were turned out shortly after 10. I can only assume the ball dropped in Times Square and it's really 2016. If not, well, as I said earlier, I spend most my life dazed and confused.

I'm not sure what's on the agenda for today. When color television first came out in the 60's, we used to enjoy watching the Rose Parade, but that's since lost it's glimmer. When I was in the marching band business, (teaching) I enjoyed flipping channels from one parade to another and comparing marching units, but I've lost interest in those. 

I'm going to make an attempt at getting out to the shop later today, but wouldn't want to bet good money that that will happen. A safer wager might be that I'll take a nap. I'm fairly certain that it's written in the Grandpa Handbook, under the Holiday Section, that grandpa's the world over are required to take an afternoon nap on New Year's Day. It's tough, but rules are rules, and I'm not one to break them.



After all, a man's work is never done.

So are the tales from Pentoga Road...