3…2…1….. Happy New Year!

We  quietly rung in the New Year last Wednesday night by watching the New York  ball drop  in Time Square  via the TV.  After a rowdy good time of UNO  playing it was nice to have some quiet time.  I spent some time thinking on how happy I was for the holidays to be over. Don’t get me wrong, I love spending time with the family; but I also love the quiet time of my normal day.  I think it was one of the better ones as one of my daughters was able to join us this year.  We focused on giving the Boy Child a few gifts  but empathizing more on the point of spending time together as a family.  We only had him for a week of his break so we tried to plan accordingly.  I think we did okay on that standard.  I think fun was had by all in the week’s time.

We started by going to Boy Child’s house on the 24th, where me, him, dad, & Ms. M. spent our evening making stroganoff for dinner, hanging out, making Chex’s “Puppy Chow” and watching videos until it was time to go. Of course Christmas was the next day, so there was the typical tree thing to do. As I have placed the turkey in the oven for Christmas dinner.   

         

        

This is a good time to have a cup of coffee made from a gift from the ex-in-laws gave to me.  A two pound bag of Chocolate Caramel Brownie whole bean coffee.  Yummmmm …… got to love the gift of coffee.  I sit and watch all the activity as I check the schedule for Christmas Dinner.  We will have a full table of 5 as a neighbor will be joining us.   Here a shot of the pre-dinner table and then the table that is buried under the weight of the meal. 

           

After dinner was a night of enjoying each others company while we watched TV.   Of course that doesn’t actually mean it was “quiet” . LOL.  The siblings haven’t seen each other in a few years …. boy they sure made up for it. The hiding of Mr. C’s ugly dolls was all it took. 

     

On Friday, we decided it was a good after noon to do our traditional gift of a movie & Pizza Hut.  We went to Mt. Pleasant and saw 47 Ronin with Keanu Reeves in it.  It was a decent movie and we had a great time.  Saturday was Boy Scout  Holiday Dinner & Honor Council.  Nice turkey dinner with all the fixings.  I am happy to report that Mr. C. made his 1st rank that night.  He now is a Tenderfoot. YEAH!!!!   Family Night  was on Sunday.  On Monday we had cookie day.  We made many cut out sugar cookies.  It was found to frost & decorate them as we did it assembly line style. Well the kids did the sprinklings as I moved on to putting the Gingerbread Tree.  I spent several hours placing the candy balls on each point and artfully going through the process of building out the dripping icing icicles.  It even has sugar candy presents to be placed under the tree.  If you want to keep Mom occupied for half a day, hand her  a gingerbread kit.  It feeds both the art and the ocd side of her.  LOL.  It might be the only way you see her on the front of the camera too!!  As my daughter has proven with the pictures she took while Mom was unaware & distracted.

           

          

         

           

The next two nights involved  several UNO marathons around the dinner table  after dinner while eating the bounty of candy and cookies.  On the 2nd, we head towards Boy Child’s home.  But we did stop along the way to visit Grandma L’s house with pizzas in hand while Mr.  S. has a dental appt. after returning BC to dad’s we head back home after a long day.

Now I have so much to catch up with on blogging so be prepared to see more than one post this week or two.  Between talking  about what happened during swap season, upcoming challenges to book reviews; most definitely need to break them up in multiply postings.  So having said that, I have been having some internet issues (maybe due to the weather) I’ll post as I can.  But as always, I love comments.

Toodles,
Tricia