Seven Christmas Songs I Will Always Love and Two I Will Always Hate

First up, my favorite Christmas songs of all time, in order:

 

And I will change the station if these songs come on.  

They should be called "Mary Did You...NO!" and "The Christmas BLUES"

Hey, every Christmas needs a Grinch :)

Week (and Weekend) in Review: Scratch Tickets, St. Francis and St. Nick, and Christmasy Things

Phil made me this unique Christmas Countdown Calendar...with a scratch ticket and a biblical quote for each day in December leading up to Christmas!

You know what they say, a scratch ticket a day keeps me merry and gay!  But like, the old-fashioned Christmas-song meaning of gay.

 Friday was the Feast of St. Francis Xavier which happens to be the patron saint of our children's Pre-8 school.  This year they debuted a new mascot named Frankie the Rebel!  

The school's team name has always been The Rebels...and they are using it in a positive Catholic way.  To be a rebel means to become a saint by rebelling against the world's temptations to focus on heaven's wonders.  So yeah, Go Rebels!

The 14th Birthday of Maggie Rose and the 1st Reconciliation of Declan Kolbe

Maggie in the Middle turned FOURTEEN!  She also had her first basketball game of the season at 8pm that night, hence the outfit choice :)

We started the day with a birthday donut, then she arrived at school to find her best friend's mom had decorated her locker.  Her best friend was home quarantining but her mom is the principal of their school, and I just think it's so sweet that she went in early to decorate Maggie's locker for her.

For her birthday dinner, she chose Thai peanut chicken over coconut rice and mint brownies and peppermint ice cream for dessert.

I specialize in ugly but tasty birthday desserts - ha!

Turkey Talk and Other Tidbits

I forgot to even talk about Thanksgiving break - whoops!  

On Thanksgiving morning, I took JP and Maggie to a Boot Camp class that we love and the instructor had us do a fun Thanksgiving workout.  There were parts of a turkey (made from construction paper, not from a real turkey, that would be gross) lined up on the floor on one side of the gym.  We were put in groups on the other side of the huge gym and each group had to build a turkey using a body, ten feathers, two feet, two eyes, a nose and a gizzard.  You built the turkey by having one teammate sprint across the gym, pick up a piece, sprint back and then the whole team performed 10 of the exercises written on the paper.  While said teammate was sprinting across the gym, the other teammates were either planking or wall-sitting.  Once you performed the exercise 10 times, a different teammate would sprint and get a new paper while the others planked or wall-sat...and on and on until you built a turkey.

That took about 18 minutes, so then we had to do the same thing to build another turkey except this time we would sprint across the gym, pick a piece of paper, and give it to another team who had to complete the exercise.  That round was a lot more fun and I thoroughly enjoyed handing out burpees and pushups to the opposing teams.  Delivered with an evil cackle of course :)

The littles were thrilled when we brought home turkey bits for them to craft together - a win win.

Phil worked the chains at our Catholic high school's football game that morning, and our team got killed.  BUT!  The opposing Catholic high school literally has ex-Patriots players (hello Teddy Bruschi!) as coaches.  So, to be expected.

The One in Which Breathing Makes Me Nervous

 Do you want to get a glimpse inside a neurotic brain?

Yes?

Well then settle back because you are in the right place.

Back when COVID started, the government was handing out money for companies to buy supplies and some of the hot ticket items were air purifiers.  As the Business Manager at my previous job, I bought a LOT of air purifiers and then submitted the receipt for reimbursement from one of the various relief grants.  Due to the high demand of these items, and the fact that the government was basically picking up the bill, the price on air purifiers went way up.

Personally, I wanted one for our home but knew it was not the right time to buy (Econ 101 taught me to buy when supply is high and demand is low and never the other way around).  So I waited and waited and breathed in disgusting potentially polluted COVID air all the while.

This past Columbus Day weekend, we went up to my brother’s house in New Hampshire, where the air is clean and mountain pure, but even he had an air purifier going 24/7.  My brother is an ER doctor and so I figured if he thought an air purifier was a good idea, I better follow suit.

But then life got busy and I forgot that I desperately wanted and needed an air purifier.  Sometimes this forgetfulness is a very good thing when it comes to my bank account.  

Week in Review: Thanksgiving Parade at Plymouth Rock, All My Lovies Are Home, and Christmas Season Starts on Black Friday

 Tomorrow is Turkey Day so I wanted to wrap up this short week today!

1) 

We went to America's Thanksgiving Parade on Saturday...no not the Macy's Parade...the Plymouth, MA parade!  We have so much history here and my kids totally take it for granted so I am trying to do a better job at explaining our history to them as we travel around New England.

Whew that was a lot of photos!  And I deleted more than I posted.  You're welcome :)  

2)

One funny thing that happened was that the Mayflower float got caught in the power lines...something that definitely wouldn't have happened to the real Pilgrims.

Ummm, what do we do?

Act like we're in 1620?

Sounds good.  Ignore and move on!