The best things...

...come in small packages.

In this case three flat-rate priority mail boxes from Michigan that arrived today.
The best part of what was stuffed into these?

Well, it wasn't all the smaller boxes wrapped in Christmas-y paper.
And it wasn't these, either:

(Although that Sweet Cajun trail mix is like ambrosia to us...)

And it wasn't even the absolutely magical Chocolate Revel Bars that Mom made:

Nope, the absolute, amazing, beautiful things that arrived were these:

Yep. A couple of wooden ornaments from the early '80s. That teddy bear has hung on my parents' tree since 1983. It was a gift from Mrs. Carnahan in Edina, MN, when I was 3 years old. Since we left Minnesota when I was 5, I only have hazy memories of her...mostly playing with toys, those little plastic monkeys that you could chain together by hooking an arm over a tail, and see how long you could get the chain before it either reached the floor, or you knocked some of the monkeys and they all fell. But that teddy bear ornament was always mine to hang on the tree, and I'm pretty sure as the years went on it was placed higher and higher as I grew taller.
The cardinal I'm a bit less certain of, but I do know that for me, cardinals are associated with my grandparents' house in winter. There was always snow, every Christmas (and we drove there, every Christmas, for almost two decades), and there were always birds at the birdfeeders. My grandmother's napkin rings were painted wooden birds. There were paintings of birds, books about birds, birds done in needlepoint all around the house. (There were lots of flowers, too, but I like to associate those with summer.) Now I have a little red bird nested in my tree.
Since we can't be with our family this year, having a piece of the family here is wonderful.
Thanks, Mom & Dad, you two are awesome. I love you.