7 Quick Takes resolustion edition

1. We just hours ago got home from a family trip to Hilton Head, SC.  It was us and my parents for 6 days of relaxation and ringing in the new year.  My mother hooked four of us on candy crush, we ate a lot of junk food (and some good food too), and we had a nice New Year's day lunch with Mike's aunt and uncle.  They live in an awesome retirement community and January 1, 2014 can always be remembered as the day I decided I want to retire in a place like that.

2.  I think I'll start retirement now, with some puzzles, games and candy crush.  Maybe that's not retirement, just the continuation of vacation.  I'm stopping the junk food now though because... yuck!  I'm fed up with it...haha!   I already had a glass of water with some apple cider vinegar in it, phase one of detox the yuck!

3.  I've been contemplating a word for the year.  So far I'm thinking of LESS as in eat less, commit to less, stress less etc... We'll see if that sticks.

4.  I bought a lot of clothes at Goodwill in Hilton Head.  I am set for a long time, since a lot of what I wear is as older than my kids.  I have at least two things that are older than Jonathan (18), and many many things older that Jake (11).  Now I have some new to me old things, so I can get rid of the old to me old things.  If you're looking for me, I'll be cleaning out my closet. (phase two of detox the yuck?)

5. I have twice done the saint name generator.  Why twice?  Well the first time I saved it on my phone, but I just went to look at him and he was gone.  It took me awhile to google him, but it was Blessed Gerard de Lunel.  It seems that some places call him Blessed and some call him Saint.  I'll have to spend more time getting to know him.  I must admit when I saw that he was invoked for epilepsy and headaches it kind of stressed me out, do we have seizures and headaches in our future?  When I couldn't find St (Bl?) Gerard de Lunel, I pushed the button again and came up with St Joan of Valois, also a little stressful because she was disabled (are we going to become disabled?), but it says she endured her disability with patience and it's patience I need, so I'll keep them both.  It will be the year of less of most things, more saints!  Also Joan of Valois was a Third Order Franciscan
just like the priests at our parish, so I'll take that as a good sign.

6.  I'm still going to do the month by month update of 2013, since it was such a bad year for blogging for me.  I know I'm on February, I'll get to it.

7. In the meantime, here's a little 15 second insta-video of the year in reverse.

For more quick takes see Jen.

Christmas morning

Happy Birthday Jesus!

Merry Christmas to all...

On the way to Christmas Eve Mass.

And look who we passed on the way! 

Mass was beautiful.  Madi and Jake sang wonderfully.  A group of kids acted out the Gospel story of Luke (and I couldn't help but give a dirty look to the man behind me who complained that he couldn't understand the kids and said they should have adults up there doing that (seriously??)).  Father Robert's homily was about how Jesus came to "spoon" with us, he used two big serving spoons as props and showed how from far away you can't tell if there are one or two.

back at home...The guys checking out the golf course they are going to play in Hilton Head.

 

Meme's loving the mug that Jake made for her!

...and to all a good night!

Merry Christmas!!!

It's almost Christmas-- a mini-daybook

Outside my window... It is so warm out we actually have our AC on right now, it's not really THAT hot and normally we'd never have our air on when it's 84* out, but there's far too much cleaning, baking and Christmas prep to do and being hot would not be good. I'm glad it's going to cool off by tomorrow!


I am thinking about... The Polar Express.  Jake and I just watched it, he said, he'd never seen the whole thing before.  I cried at the end.

 

From the kitchen...This morning I prepared pineapple casserole and mac and cheese to go with the ham and vegetables for Christmas dinner.  I also put together hash brown casserole to go with the eggs, bacon, and skier's french toast for Christmas morning.  We are also making and eating tons of cookies.  I've cooked so much today, Jake and Madi and I are gonna hit up Chick fil a on the way to choir in a little while because I just can't cook any more.

I am creating...A bunch of cute little ornaments for some people at church.

 

I am reading... This and this and a lot of blogs.

 I am praying...  For a lot of people everyday.       

I am hearing...Jake and the neighbors playing outside, and the washer, dryer, and dishwasher.

 

Around the house...We are almost ready for Christmas.


One of my favorite things...Christmas Eve Mass!

Another one of my favorite things...Christmas cards!!

 

A few plans for the next week...Christmas!!!  Then we are heading to Hilton Head, SC with my parents for New Year's week.

A favorite quote for today…

A picture thought ...An instagram Advent...

7 QTs

1.  Having homeschooled my kids for over 12 years, I've studied my share of science.  Over and over again!  Well this year with Jake in school and the 5th grade science fair looming on the horizon right after Christmas break, I finally have to admit to people outside of my own home, that while I think I'm pretty smart, I cannot for the life of me figure out which is the dependent variable and which is the independent variable in a science experiment.  I just don't get it.  I can even use my last year's knowledge of chemistry to have some vague idea about things we didn't include in Jake's balloon, baking soda, vinegar experiment, like how many moles of each substance we used, and that we could have experimented farther to see which substance, the baking soda or the vinegar, was the limiting reactant in the experiment (I had to ask Jonathan was about the term 'limiting reactant', but I knew the idea of it), but to figure out if the air in the balloon or the vinegar or the baking soda is dependent or independent, is beyond the scope of my knowledge.

2. On the subject of homeschooling vs being a public school mom, I can comfortably say that I am a really good homeschooling mom, but I'm still learning the ropes when it comes to being a school mom.  It took me a couple days at the beginning of the year to follow the drop/off pick up procedure rules, specifically not getting out of line and passing the other cars.  This week I had one job (well for the whole year so far, I've only had this one job), it involved providing yoohoo for Jake's class's craft day on Wednesday.  #1 I've never purchased yoohoo (this is no way implies that we don't consume large quantities of junk, just not yoohoo).  In the second place, I actually thought I was supposed to bring it for today (Friday) for the other "fun day" this week.  Thirdly, I was also supposed to get the next door neighbor to also provide yoohoo for the same day.  I mentioned it to her once weeks ago and never got further than that.  On the way home from Disney (see great homeschooling mom, Jake skipped school that day) on Tuesday after receiving the reminder text that the yoohoo was due the next morning, I stopped at a super Target in a big fancy plaza... no yoohoo, I even asked.  I immediately texted the mom in charge of this, she's a good school mom.  She was on her way to Publix and offered to pick up all the yoohoo (the 20 I was supposed to provide and the 20 I was supposed to get the neighbor to provide) (his class isn't that big, I guess it was for the whole fifth grade) (oh and good news, someone else brought water bottles so my own kid, actually got a drink too) (again, Jake is the king of junk food and has spent a small fortune in the cafeteria on chocolate milk this year, but he is as much afraid of yoohoo as I am) (in spite of the fact that the bubble boy's father drives a yoohoo truck) (Seinfeld reference).  Needless to say, I failed in my one job as a school mom.  I did immediately send Jake and Jonathan to the good school mom's house with the $$$ to pay for the yoohoo though (she had already left it on our doorstep, even before we got home).

3. Jake and Madi had a Christmas tour performance at a camp for terminally ill children a couple weeks ago.  One of the theatre moms made a comment that we don't appreciate how lucky we are that our kids are healthy.  I've been thinking about that a lot lately (well more or less for the last 18 years).  I really really do appreciate that my kids and my husband are healthy!  Most of them have almost died at one time or another, or in Jonathan's case three different times.  Generally my kids are healthy (Jake the junk food king has never been on antibiotics in his life, not just because we've refused them, but he's actually never had anything that needed them), but starting out parenting with a kid in ICU with undetectable bloodsugar, a stroke at 3 days old, and possible brain damage, affects the way you look at your kids forever.  I appreciate health every second!

4.  I think I might update the 'about me' section of my blog.  I'm slowly preparing for an influx of readers, who knows maybe in the coming year I'll have a post that garners five comments!!

5.  I just googled the word garner to make sure I used it right!

6.  Speaking of words, I think I just realized that antidote and anecdote are two different words.

antidote...

1

:  a remedy to counteract the effects of poison

2

:  something that relieves, prevents, or counteracts antidote

to boredom>
anecdote...

a short and amusing or interesting story about a real incident or person.

"told anecdotes about his job"

 

 

7.  How about some pictures?  Christmas tour performances, and St Patrick's St Nicholas breakfast (where we provided Christmas presents for 150 kids,  filled over 200 bags to hand out to homeless people, and made Christmas cards for people in nursing homes).

For more quick takes, visit Jen.

"Most" posts of 2013

In the spirit of kicking it up a notch, I'm linking with some of the popular kids for Sarah's most posts. There's a Seinfeld episode where George points out if you take everything he's accomplished in his life and condense it into one day, it looks decent.  Maybe the same can be said for my blog.


Post with most clicks...this might be cheating because it is from a little more than a year ago, but it looks like my post with the most clicks is this one Talk talk talk.  Interestingly, with 128 clicks, I only got 1 comment.


Most comments... I actually have a few posts with four comments.  Is that the saddest thing you've ever heard...my posts with the most comments this year have FOUR comments!!  I'm going with this one for most comments...  Parenting... a work in progress.


Post with best pictures is probably this one... 7 QTs The Little Mermaid edition.


Hardest post to write was maybe this one... Not sure what this will be about because I'm still not really sure what it's about.  Or this one because I'm having a hard time with how fast my kids are growing up!!


Personal favorite is... probably this.