My first Christmas elf has arrived

My Christmas elves have been making their way home this week and turning our wise, old house into their workshop.

Lucky us!

Our youngest daughter Molly was the first to arrive and she set right to work.

“I’m going to fix some things around here,” she announced. “I want to be handy.”

She asked if we had a power drill and we told her we did not know. She found three of them in our basement. The poor kid does not come by her desire to be handy naturally.

Then, she sanded the downstairs bathroom door, took the lock apart and oiled it, and put everything back together again. She did the same to our back door and now both doors actually close all the way and lock.

She intends to replace our entire side door in the coming days.

She also sharpened all our knives and cleaned, oiled and sharpened our very lame collection of scissors.

In between these fix-it jobs, she harvested all of the peppers and tomatoes in our family room planter, and whipped them into a delicious, very spicy hot sauce. Then she made us some pork carnitas for dinner.

She also made 62 pieroghis, four walnut rolls, and 24 homemade pop tarts.

Last night she prepared a nice egg plant lasagna to welcome our next round of elves — Katherine, Ed and their adorable dog Benny. And, to celebrate, we uncorked a bottle of her homemade Orahovac, the Croatian walnut liqueur she has perfected with the wild walnuts she collects and shells.

In her spare time she wrote the annual Biskupic Christmas play.

She’s only been home a few days.

I am so excited to spend time with all my elves as they return to Appleton for the holidays!

I hope you and your elves enjoy a wonderful, delicious, hilarious, toasty, memorable, healthy holiday with family and friends.

Merry Christmas from an ever grateful mom and a very excited grandma!

She is wearing her Baba’s handknit hat in this picture and I just want to say, my grandma and her mother, who were both very handy, very industrious, very strong women, would both be so proud of Molly’s efforts!