A Fun Weekend of Family and Films

It was a good weekend.  Here are some of the highlights. 

Charly and I have been getting into Christmas movies this year.  On Friday night, we watched this one on Prime, "It's Christmas Carol."  It's a modern day take-off on Charles Dickens story "A Christmas Carol." It's been out since 2012, but this was the first time we had seen it.  We really enjoyed it. 

Saturday was another cold day, although there was some blue sky, although you can see that the clouds were really low on the mountains. 

We went to our daughter's home which is in Utah country, a little less than an hour south of where we live. When we got there, I was presented with my Christmas gift from the family and told to open it.  It's a lovely nativity for my collection.  I love it. Here are the two youngest granddaughters with my gift.  

We took some gingerbread houses for our grands to make and some ceramic ornaments for them to paint.  

They love making things and doing crafts.  

Our 15-year-old granddaughter and our 12-year-old grandson loved working on a gingerbread house and train. 

Our 5-year-old granddaughter with the ornaments she is painting.  She is a very creative and artistic little girl.  

Here is the 9-year-old with her little gingerbread house. 

After a while of doing crafts, we all went to Walmart to do a little shopping.  We were doing some very special shopping and each family member was picking out a toy to donate to Toys for Tots. 

We did something similar with our own children when they were all still living at home.  At Christmas, each child got to pick out a toy to donate to Toys for Tots.  Saturday, we did the same thing with our grandchildren. 

We then took the toys to the local Papa Murphy's Pizza where there is a donation big for Toys for Tots. The children carefully placed the toys they had selected into the bin so they can be given to less fortunate children. 

The grandchildren seemed to really enjoy the act of shopping for toys to give to others. 

There were two large bins of donated toys - one completely full and another filling up quickly.    I'm glad that there are so many that think of others and want to share to make Christmas a little merrier. 

Of course, since we went to Papa Murphy's Pizza to donate the toys, we got pizza for lunch.  

The two youngest got small pizzas and put them together themselves to bake.   The rest of us shared two family size pizzas.  It was a fun family pizza party! 

Here's a picture of Charly talking to our 17-year-old grandson in the family room of our daughter's beautiful new home. That's our 9-year-old granddaughter doing a tumbling move on the floor at the bottom of the picture.   

After lunch, there was more visiting and craft and gingerbread house making.

Grandpa and our 12-year-old grandson played a little chess. 

A little later, before we left to come home, we did a little more shopping with our daughter and grands.  Our granddaughters ended up in the book section, sitting on the floor reading.  I thought it was so cute.  They occupied themselves like that for quite a while.  We didn't get home until past dinner time, having had an excellent day with our daughter and grandchildren.  

We came home with some delicious caramel corn our daughter made. 

I put my new nativity on the mantle. 

I also put this on the tree.  It was the gift tag on the caramel corn and it is so pretty.

Sunday at church, I got another lovely ornament for the tree in the woman's class.   Everyone got one.  I love nativity ornaments.

After church, I wrapped and bagged some more gifts.  The gift bags on the right are all for our daughter, her husband and the grandchildren. 

A little later on Sunday, Charly and I went for a walk.  I wore this coat that my daughter gave me.  She had worn it several times, but told me that it was a little too big for her and asked me if I could use it.  Of course! It fits me perfectly and is the right weight for walking in the winter.  

Our Sunday dinner was slow cooker beef and mushrooms over rice, with fresh steamed green beans and some of the wonderful bread our daughter made and sent us home with.  Everything was very good. 

While we ate dinner, we watched another fun Christmas movie, "12 Dates of Christmas."  It was good - like "Groundhog Day," but set at Christmastime. 

Still in a Christmas movie mood, we watched "The Man Who Invented Christmas," the 2017 movie that is the story of Charles Dickens writing "A Christmas Carol" and another excellent Christmas movie.  

Weekend Gratitude:

• Going to our daughter's and spending time with our grandkids.
• Watching Christmas movies with Charly.
• Seeing and talking to friends at church. 
• Donating toys to help other children have a Merry Christmas

Coming up this week:

Tuesday - Appointment after school

Friday - Staff Christmas breakfast at school

Friday - Decorating for the church Christmas breakfast

Saturday -  Church Christmas breakfast

That's all for this weekend.  Thanks for stopping by.  Have a good week, and keep Christmas in your heart every day!

Until next time,

🤶Deb🎄

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, 

and try to keep it all the year. 

I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. 

The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. 

I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.”

― Charles Dickens, 

A Christmas Carol

 

My Favorite Parts of Last Week

I am late in joining Susanne at Living to Tell the Story for Friday Fave Five, but as the old adage goes, better late than never, so here are some of my favorite parts of last week.

Charly has been very busy moving things around in the family room in preprartion for getting the new shelving units installed on the main wall of the room.  Here are the sections of shelving...

 ...and here is the wall where they will be installed.  Some friends from church will be helping with the installation, then there will be more moving stuff around until we have every organized the way we want it.

Charly has also been doing a lot of work in the yard, early in the morning before it gets too hot.  We have two large Mesquite trees in our front yard and they are badly overgrown and in need of a major trim.

Charly got a new tool to help him with the task - it is a chainsaw that attaches to a pole.  It sounds like a great idea, and in theory it is, but this baby is heavy and it takes a lot of muscle and control to hold it up in the air and cut down branches that are high overhead.  Charly did a great job last week, but there is more to be done.  Of course I helped Charly pick up the branches he cut down, but there is no way I could lift a chain saw over my head for an extended period of time to cut down branches.  

With all that work, it was nice to go for an afternoon or evening swim, especially with the temperatures around here now consistently over 100 every day.

While Charly was working in the yard, I was inside researching my lastest purchase - a Kindle.  I resisted getting a tablet for years, but now I want to be able to have a device on which I can send and receive emails to Josh when we are away from home on a road trip we have planned later in the summer.  I'm also excited to download some books to read, but I rather think that I will still prefer paper and ink when it comes to reading.

 Friday evening, I helped put on a baby shower for a friend who has just adopted a newborn baby girl.

 The ladies from church pitched right in to help with decorations and refreshments.

There was a great turn-out as everyone is so excited for this woman and her husband who has struggled with infertility for years and now have not one, but two children, since they are also adopting a five-year-old boy.  

There is a new grocery store in town, and my husband, who loves to grocery shop, just had to check it out today.  Hubby liked the new store, and we did get some great "grand-opening deals, but I was overall unimpressed and we will probably keep shopping at the same grocery store we have shopped at since we moved here in 2001.  

I'm reading this book this week.  A friend from work thought I'd enjoy it and loaned it to me. I'll be teaching American Literature next year, and this book definitely has a connection to American Literature.  It started out a bit slow, but is getting more interesting.

 This note in the middle of the book made me smile. My friend knows me well enough to know that I don't like or go to "R-rated" movies or read "R-rated" books, so she covered up some of the portions she thought were a bit too "racy" for my tastes. Don't worry, I promise to keep those sections covered up and not read them.  I do have my personal standards and I try to live by them.

Speaking of movies, Charly and I went to two of them last week.  My favorite of the two was "The Cokeville Miracle."  If you get the opportunity to see this movie, either at the theater, or at Netflix, I would encourage you to do it.  It is a true story of an event that happened in Cokeville, Wyoming in 1986, when a violently mentally ill man and his wife took an entire elementary school full of children and teachers hostage.  I won't give the story line or ending away, but if you believe in miracles and angels, and even if  you don't, you will want to see this movie. Because of violent nature of this real-life event, it would not be good for younger children, but it was an excellent, well-done movie for everyone else!

We also saw this movie, "San Andreas" which is about a major earthquake in California that basically knocks San Francisco into the Pacific Ocean.  Great special affects with likable characters and a story line that includes heroes, family, love and romance.  We enjoyed it.  There were a few bad words, but I guess if I was in an earthquake like the one portrayed, with death and destruction all around and things going from bad to worse almost by the minute,  I might say a few things I don't normally say too.  Other than that "mild language, " there was nothing objectionable except for parts of California falling into the sea.  

On that note, I will end with this awesome quote from Coco Chanel:

 Enjoy the coming week!