Mom’s Christmas shopping adventure was probably way more fun
than anything I did today; but Michael and I had fun even with all of the work
time at the Inn.
Spending the morning working in the kitchen at the Inn was a
blast; though Rebecca and I had more fun on the prep line than Michael did
helping out with the dishes and bussing everything from pans of food going out
to the buffet tables to trolleys full of dirty dishes coming back from the
dining room. There were only thirty-eight
women officially going on the shopping trip this year, but the dining room was
more than half-full with other guests who were taking advantage of the special
morning meal offer.
Mom, Grandma, Aunt Leanne, and Aunt Grace were all going on
the trip, but Aunt Deborah was staying behind to help Uncle Mark at the clinic
– mostly because she didn’t want to do both shopping trips this week; and she
and Uncle Nick will be able to shop for Leah on Saturday anyway because she’ll
be staying here with her grandparents.
The three of them were at the breakfast buffet, though; and Aunt Deborah
took custody of Naomi when Liz left with the shoppers and the teachers in the
family needed to get to school. She
dropped both kids off at KidZone before going to the clinic – just as Dad did
the same with Ethan and Ehlana before he went into the office.
I didn’t catch up on most of that news until later, but I
did take a break to spend a few minutes with my favorite women before they left
town – and not because I wanted to make sure they had my Christmas wish list.
Michael, Rebecca, and I also stopped working long enough
before we needed to be at school so that we could eat something too; and then
we were off and running again. With lots
of kids happily speculating over whether their mothers would be getting them
the Christmas gifts of their dreams this year; it’s no surprise that the kids’
shopping trip moved to number one over football as the top kid and teen chat
topic.
While I’m thinking about gifts, here’s some advice for guys
in general – if you’re seriously planning on re-gifting something that you
bought as a birthday gift for your now-ex-girlfriend to a different girl for
Christmas, don’t admit that to your buddies where it might be overheard and
make it to the girl-chat gossip network.
I didn’t mention it in my last update, but I thought that the comments
from a couple of the girls last night suggesting that Rebecca should have
waited until after her birthday to break up with Jason in case he had gotten
her something really good to be equally un-cool – whether they were joking or
not.
Getting back to the real news of the day, the Christmas
season is already heating up at school for more reasons that the shopping
trips. With just two weeks and two days
left to get ready for the school Christmas concert; Michael started taking time
off from our classes to help with practices for the kids in the younger grades
that he’ll be accompanying on the guitar.
We worked on our concert music in band practice too; but our first big
event in this Friday night at the Pinehurst Christmas parade. I really hadn’t thought about that much with
everything else we have on the go; but it is going to be exciting; and I can
hardly wait to find out what it’s like to be at a night-time parade.
Michael and I were into music at lunchtime too; and we
decided on which song to do for our duet – one of the three that Michael had
picked out. I hadn’t heard it done as a
duet before; but really love the ideas he has for our version of it. We didn’t get a chance to practice tonight,
but Michael’s going to try to stop in after work tomorrow so we can get
started; and it won’t take me very long to work up a keyboard arrangement –
including at least some of the background instrumentals.
Moving along, we were back to our normal after-school study
schedule today, and though Tim didn’t have football to watch while he waited
for us to finish band practice; he didn’t have any problems rounding up a few
guys who were willing to toss a ball around on the last nice, warmer-weather
day we expect to have for the rest of the week.
That was our first study group as two couples; and Patricia had as much
fun with that as we did. Rowen thought
that the drinks with two straws and two plates of snacks to share was a bit
embarrassing; but I thought it was cute.
Michael and I only had about forty-five minutes before we needed to be
at the Inn by then; so we blasted through as
much work as we could before leaving Rowen and Tim to finish the rest of their
assignments without us.
The dinner rush was busy for a Tuesday, but not any harder
to handle than the breakfast buffet had been this morning. We were busy and a bit short-handed, though;
so we weren’t ready to close the Inn until about the same time as our favorite
shoppers were getting home from Crystal
Springs. I missed out on most of the father-kids fun
tonight, or I did with my father, brother, sister, and everyone else they had
dinner and a play night with while I was busy; but I guess Michael, Rebecca,
and I managed to have a pretty good time with their father while we worked in
the kitchen together.
We were home by the time Mom and Miranda got back to the
Stone’s house, but for some unknown reason; I was put in charge of watching
Ethan and Ehlana and getting them ready for bed while the parents unladed the
van, and Michael and Rebecca were sent off to finish their homework. Grandma had already returned Dad’s truck
before I got home because Aunt Leanne and Zack were ready to go home before the
Wal-Mart stop on their trip; so they’d done their last fast food fix and
brought their group home early.
Mom was pretty much done for the day by the time everything
had been unloaded and put away, so we went with the condensed version of all
daily recaps before we all came up to our beds.
I’m the only person who is still awake now; though Mom got temporarily
un-tired earlier while having her Jacuzzi time.
Yeah, I really don’t want to go there, so if you’re
currently using your imagination on that; don’t tell me. Now, if you’d really like something
mind-blowing to think about – imagine me sitting here in my bed; using my Sight
to watch you sitting there in the future, reading my journal and imagining what
my parents might have been doing earlier tonight during and after that Jacuzzi
time.
Now I really wish I hadn’t gone there!
That’s pretty much ended my interest in writing anything
else tonight too; though there really isn’t anything else to report
anyway. I’ve spent most of the last
three hours on my usual school night studies except for about fifteen minutes
of family business time that couldn’t wait for after school tomorrow. We should have a couple of comparatively
quiet days ahead of us now; so I may even think about having an early night or
two to get ready for another busy weekend.
That’s all for now, and I’m ready for some down time, so...
...Live long and prosper, fellow Magi of the Light!
