On the First Day of Christmas. . .

Since this is day one I want to start off with a BANG. Although it is making me sort of nervous, what if I pick the wrong memory to write about? What if I am boring? Where do I start? Something my kids did? Something I did as a kid? Something Kat and I did while dating, or newlyweds? ACK!
Maybe I should just start small and work up to a BANG?
Kat and I got married in 1991 and immediately started having these full blown over the top Christmas parties for hundreds of people. Wait, Kathleen will probably read this so I should at least start with the truth. We did get married in 1991, and that year because we were more or less stuck in Oklahoma we had a small gathering of friends over the night before Christmas Eve for eggnog, cider, cookies and fudge. Gradually that morphed into something much bigger and slightly of control.
In 1993 or 1994 when my niece Elisa was still very little her mother Stephanie had brought her to the party, and then I think, left her there to run to the mall with Ann. Something like that anyway. Elisa was 2 or three and precious. She was sitting on my lap at the table and I was talking with Becky Mize. Elisa asked me so politely if she could please have a piece of Kathleen’s fudge. Since she asked so sweetly, and because I still can never say no to her I agreed, and cautioned her to be sure to wipe her mouth with a napkin so she did not get chocolate everywhere. Someone in Kat’s office had secret santa’d her a package of 25 very fancy holiday napkins that we had set on the table for people to use. I scooted the pile closer to Elisa and continued my conversation.
Elisa carefully selected the piece of fudge she wanted and ate it. Then she took a napkin off the pile and wiped her mouth and hands, wadded up the napkin and handed it to me. She must have liked the fudge because she decided to have another, and then carefully wiped her hands and mouth on a fresh napkin. Again she handed me the napkin. A few minutes later, another piece of fudge and another napkin. Pretty soon my hand was full of napkins so I stuck them in my pocket, and when that pocket got full I put them in my other pocket. When both pants pockets are full I started putting them in the pocket on my vest. After about 20 minutes Elisa informed me “Uncle Judson, I do not feel so good.” Only then did it occur to me that if she had been eating one piece of fudge for each napkin she had handed to me then we were potentially in some bad uncle territory. I looked to see how many napkins were left and was shocked to find they were all in my pockets.
About that time Kat says “where are those napkins? I was going to set them on the coffee table.” I smiled innocently, and told her “I don’t know, maybe you already used them?”
I am pretty sure she believed me. Just like I am sure Stephanie believed me when I said Elisa had eaten “a few pieces” of fudge at the party.