When I was a little girl, my grandmother knitted a long Christmas stocking for me, with Santa’s face on the front and my name across the top.  She also made one for my parents and sister, so we all have matching stockings.  When Brannon joined our family, my mom wanted to get Brannon a stocking too.  To our surprise, she found someone who hand knits stockings with the same pattern and sells them on ebay.  Apparently these stockings are popular items, because she had to order one 6 months ago to get it before Christmas.

Yesterday we received a package which contained my 29 year old stocking AND a brand new, hand knitted stocking with Brannon’s name on it!  It matched mine almost perfectly.  He loved it! Now I was really starting to catch the Christmas spirit.  I began visualizing where we could hang our stockings in our apartment, since we have no fireplace or mantle

Today, I discovered a most unpleasant surprise. I’d left the stockings on the kitchen table last night.  When I went into the kitchen this morning, Brannon’s stocking lay in a heap on the floor.  To my horror, I picked it up to find that Santa’s beard had been destroyed!  I had a hunch as to who the culprit was. I turned around and yelled in my strictest disciplinary voice, “Who ate Santa’s beard?!!?!”  Lindy crept into the room with her ears back and her tail tucked.  She had guilty written all over her face.

In the end, Brannon and I got a good laugh out of it. Santa’s dismantled beard has yet to be found, so I’m pretty sure she ingested it.  That may make for a difficult poop in a couple of days. I guess Lindy  just caught a little too much Christmas spirit.