Grandma and Grandpa are back in Arizona
until they come home again for Christmas in three weeks. As usual, I don’t feel as though I spent
nearly enough time with them, but even if I’d been around them more; the
chances are good that we’d have spent that time competing for play time with my
younger cousins – especially Brianna.
They had fun while they were here, and I’m glad that they’re able to
enjoy their retirement; so I’ll be grateful for the time we can spend together –
and hope that we can do more of that while they’re home for a longer visit at
Christmas.
Their travel day probably wasn’t as much
fun as my day at school. You might think
that wouldn’t be a tough threshold to cross; but Michael and I did have a
pretty good day thanks to our first practices with the primary classes that we’re
accompanying for the school Christmas concert.
The kids are always fun to work with, and we’re going to get to play
with them at least once every day between now and the concert; so I’m sure that
the daily musical entertainment will keep Michael and I in the Christmas spirit
– even when we get into the next round of tests that we’ll definitely be doing
over the next couple of weeks ahead of the Christmas break.
We won’t have final exams to deal with like
my favorite collegians will before most of them come home for Christmas, but I
won’t go there; since exams just aren’t that big of a story anymore for Violet,
Dillon, and the others now that they’re veterans at writing them.
Here at home, the last day of November was
a bit dull – both for the weather and the non-play time parts of the day. Football talk ruled for the guys in our usual
group; the girls were happy to talk Thanksgiving and Christmas; and the gossip
network was busy with all of the latest buzz on teen relationships. The last part of that does not include
anything I need to pass on for posterity in my journal; so let’s just not go
there.
While the Christmas concert practices were
the highlights of the day for me at school; most of those fun moments of my day
happened while hanging out with Michael from the time we were set free from
last class until he went home at eleven o’clock. Doing our homework and helping out with the
cooking and clean-up on both sides of dinner wasn’t very exciting, but our Magi
lesson; music practice; play time with Ethan and Ehlana before they went to
bed; and a bit of make-out time in the lounge to end our evening did add up to
make a dull day a pretty good one too.
Mom’s Magi lesson was more important in the
grand scheme of things, but our music practice was longer because we’re working
on a lot of things – including band, teen praise team, and all of the music we’re
doing for the school Christmas concert.
The school music includes another duet we’ve been drafted for; and we
picked the Christmas duet from the new Pitch Perfect movie – my current
favorite Christmas song from a non-Christmas movie! We’re making up our own arrangement of the Winter
Wonderland – Here Comes Santa Claus mash-up; mostly because Michael doesn’t
want to include much of the rapping that’s in the album version of the
song. I like this pick because it’s the
first duet we’ll have done that is just a fun song instead of the more
emotional songs we’ve done together so far – at least when it comes to concerts
at school or services at church.
Our play time with Ethan and Ehlana
included them hanging out with us while we were practicing our music; but our
real play time was some video gaming in the lounge and setting up and
decorating the little tree that helps to make my room feel so festive during
the holidays.
Thinking about that has me thinking about
Rowen – and our first Christmas as best friends. She was doing her own thing today with her family
– and Tim; so she wouldn’t have been able to help decorate the lounge
tonight. Since she did get her shiny new
driver’s license today; I’ll guess that she’d have picked going out for a drive
with her mother and everything else she and Tim had planned for tonight over
that anyway. It’s a bit sad that we don’t
still get to do everything together the way it seemed that we did when I first
moved here, but that isn’t all bad; and there are some things that we just don’t
want to share anyway – like make-out time with our respective boyfriends! ;^)
Moving along and not thinking about that
too much; it was back to work and studying for me after Michael went home for
the night. I didn’t want to be up all
night doing that, so I opted for some quality time phasing to get everything
done faster – at least in real time.
That’s the only reason it isn’t heading toward five o’clock or so as I
write this now; but it feels that late to me after the power drain it took to
make that happen. The work went well;
the archive assignment was tough to get through without falling asleep; and my
language studies are far-enough ahead that I should be done early and be able
to take an extra week off at Christmas before moving on to my next language.
The only thing I want to move on to right
now, though, is some serious sleep time.
I have covered the news highlights, and I’ll need all of the sleep I can
get since my schedule is just going to get busier through the rest of the week;
so, until next time...
...May the Magi Force be with you!
