A few innocent comments from our fourth grader inspired this summation of the holidays in our home.
In the middle of one of our meals, she burst out:
“When Grammy and Binks are here there sure is a lot of liquor around!”
To catch you up to speed, she’s referring to my parents. They were supposed to be known as Grammy and Gramps, but way back when my now 22-year-old daughter was learning to talk, she blurted out “Binks,” instead of Gramps. A melding of that moniker plus binkie, her pacifier. It was so cute it stuck.
To which I replied:
“What? No, honey, why do you think that?” Haha, um, awkward pause.
She points up to the counter.
Gotcha. I can certainly see how she might think that.We don’t make it a habit to have our booze out of the pantry. Notice I said pantry.We don’t have a locking liquor cabinet. In fact, we really don’t stock all that much hooch in our home. But the holidays are a celebration and we spent a fair amount of our time safe within our cheery home.Truth be told, 98% of our spirits may have been gifts from my parents. If you’ll notice in the picture, I learned on this visit that I don’t own wine stoppers. We improvised by placing a foot from the George Foreman grill over our open bottle of red wine.
A few moments later, during the same meal, our little girl added to her observation.
“And I think there is a whole lot more cussing.”
Giggles ensued.
To her credit, she was right again, but I know my mom felt tinges of embarrassment. Mom and dad don’t have little ears around much in their home anymore. I’m not going to say they slew dirty words like sailors, but they do use a bit more colorful language to describe life, work through issues. 
Ironically, I found a fun gift for dad at a local gift shop.
I understand why mom was feeling a little embarrassed.
“You’re not going to write about this are you?”
Well, yes, mom. It’s what I do. I love you anyway and probably so will my readers.
If you visit us in the future, feel free to bring along the following hostess gifts: wine stoppers, wine and hooch. We need to restock our pantry.
How were the holidays different in your home than every day life?
Kids are paying attention even when we don’t think so, huh!?
I have a plethora of wine stoppers – will give you a couple next time we have a “date”.
Daria, especially when we don’t want them to pay attention! Why is that? Yes, date night! Gimme a jingle!
hahah! those little sponges pick up everything. I have wine stoppers, and none of them seem to work very well so we drink everything down, which then eliminates the need for a wine stopper.
Jenny, I always like and often copy the way you think! Although I didn’t drink it all, I DID cook with it all!
Heehee! This cracked me up. I have plenty of wine stoppers too…never sticks around long enough to use them!
Happy to help you laugh, Jen! I’m learning wine stoppers might not be as necessary as I imagined! Just finish it off! Thanks for stopping by!
Sounds like something my grandkids would say!
Yep, I hope we’ll still laugh about it years from now! Thanks, Allie, happy to see you here.
Your parents and my parents could have some wicked good fun.
Ah, Lori, why does this not surprise me? I’d love to get them together, which means, we’d need to get together. Double the booze