Merry Christmas!

Hey, Sibs!

‘Tis the season for joy … and food! Oh, yeah, and love and peace and laughter and quiet moments with nature and cherished hours with family.

Kinda tough this year, though, eh? (Did you catch my Canadian accent there?)

Here’s my Yelp review for 2020:

★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

I would have given it zero stars, but …

  1. It didn’t give me that option.

  2. There really were some redeeming things about the year that we must not ignore.

Not the least of which was the arrival of our precious Weston!

Being cooped up by pandemic stay-at-home orders has been sucky at times, but completely tolerable most of the time. Mel and I spent extra time together (a good thing indeed).

We even got our bikes tuned up at the local bike shop so that we could ride downhill to the bagel place and then work off our breakfast while riding uphill back home.

We also got to spend a little more time with our hobbies—Melanie’s quilting and crocheting and my woodworking. Melanie made a beautiful quilt for Weston (as she did for Jackson) and is making a really interesting “art quilt” wall hanging for Christmas. She also crocheted a baby blanket for Weston and three Baby Yodas (a.k.a. “the child” - click that link to see one).

Because of the emphasis on remote learning, Melanie added a gig teaching classes to kids with an online learning platform called Outschool. She taught fifth grade math subjects and several crochet classes. She had students from all over the US plus Spain, the UK, and Australia.

By now you’re probably wondering about that wood thing I sent you with four rubber feet.

It’s a trivet. Or a very small cheese board. (You knew I would bring it back to food eventually.)

Pretty odd design, I’d say. Each of you got a different one, as you can see from the photos on this page. If you haven’t had too much egg nog, you can probably figure out which one is whose.

As a trivet, it’s safe to use under a pot that just came off the stove or a dish that just came out of the oven. The finish on it is food-grade mineral oil. I included a small bottle for starters. [BREAKING NEWS: I forgot to put that bottle in the box! I’ll send it to you in the next few days.] You can get more online or at most drug stores. Whenever your trivet’s finish starts to lose its sheen, wipe on a small amount with a paper towel and let it set for about 12 hours.

That also means it’s safe to put food on. (I choose not to use mine as a cutting board so that I don’t mar up the surface.)

If you do put food on it, I highly recommend a wedge of semi-hard blue cheese and the local honey I enclosed. We learned that combo when we went on a bike ride among the wineries in Temecula this fall. (Not that ambitious, really—we rented electric bikes.) The cheese and honey is a surprising combination that’s really delicious.

Oh, yeah, back to the trivet designs. Each one is different, but they also go together as a set—just like the Hays sibs.

If you scroll down this page, you’ll see a photo of them all together, forming an “H” for Hays. There’s one for each of us. The heart in the middle signifies a couple of things:

  1. It’s for the heart that we share as sibs in a loving family. We may not get together often, but when we do, it’s 100% fun and laughter and hugs and smiles.

  2. It’s also a symbol of our dear sister Kathleen Louise, whose heart only lasted 19 days here on earth, but is beating in eternity in Heaven. I look forward to meeting her some day.

    The way I see it, John was so good he paved the way for Kathleen and then to Vicki. Vicki was so good, Mom and Dad lapped her up for 5 years before having me. Then they balanced things out with Amy, who was so darned cute they figured they couldn’t do any better and stopped.

Anyway, I don’t know if these trivets will ever be in the same place again, but when you use yours, you’ll always know that you have three sibs on earth and one in Heaven who love you very much and are all part of this wonderful family.

Add to that Gayle and Jacquie and Dave and Melanie and the math goes logarithmic! How did we all get so lucky?

I do hope we can pull off another Sibs reunion. As Gayle says, that would be “just grand.” In Dave’s words, it would be a s**t-ton of fun.

Until then, I will miss you very much and think of you every time I use my trivet … well, probably more often than that.

Merry Christmas!

Scott