The blog posts below are taken from my grandmother's diaries. Althea Green Smith Crook was lovingly referred to as Nanny to her immediate family ~ thus her diaries are called Nanny's Diaries.

Nanny wrote in her diaries when she remembered to - mostly in the evening. There will be some years in which she didn't keep diaries and there will also be some days/weeks in her yearly diaries in which she skipped or forgot to write in them. For the most part, these are her words - written as she wrote them. There will be typos, forgotten punctuation, and other grammatical errors - but I am rewriting these as my Nanny originally wrote them.

As with all old handwriting, there are some entries that I can't quite make out - and these entries will be followed with a (?) to signify that this may or may not be correct or I can't figure out what she is trying to write.

Thank you Nanny for leaving us 50 years worth of memories! We miss you!

Tuesday, December 28, 2021

December 24 - 25, 1980

 

Wednesday, December 24, 1980

 

A busy day. I have been so busy putting on all the finishing touches. I made pies, bread, rolls, cleaned up the kitchen. Kim came up, she cleaned up my house, prepared the sandwich fillings, the dip etc. Fern came about 2:30. Monica was here. We had supper and Kim came back, made up the snacks, got everything already. Then about 8 PM we began opening our gifts. They were many and beautiful. We had a nice evening. Fern stayed here all night.

 






 

 

 

 

Thursday, December 25, 1980 20 below we got up at 530

 

This is been a big day. Up early, got breakfast, down to Betty’s early. What a lot of excitement. The kids had opened their stockings and they sure got a lot. Then in the living room it was heavily loaded with gifts. Many nice and useful things then Dorothea and David came. More excitement with a great smell of roast turkey, roast pork, boiled onions, turnip etc. etc. They then began to open up their many packages. Nice jackets, shoes, socks, sweater tops, sweaters, jewelry, perfumery etc. etc. It all was interesting and we enjoyed it so much as they did. The kids got a lot. Then Fern and I sat in the living room by the nice warm or hot living room stove. The wind blowed so hard and it was a way below zero temp. We was warm enough. The temp didn’t go up above zero all day. In evening Jeff and Paula came, they had dinner and he brought nice gifts. We all was very pleased to see them. The gifts were very nice and useful. For dinner Betty had Susan and her family and Joy and her family. The kids all were very good. Looked nice all dressed up in their new Christmas clothes. Walt found Charlene’s waterpipe frozen. David had frozen pipes. Jeff’s car was without antifreeze. It was 25 below. I came home early. It was so good to get home. I began to take care of all the gifts and then started on the tree. After Billie got the chores done, we got to working together on the tree. Dorothea, Carmen, Jeff and Paula came. They had been over to Joy’s. This awful cold and windy day froze water pipes up to David’s and at Walt’s and Jeff’s. There has been a lot of damage in freezing pipes etc. because of this cold and wind.

 

 

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