Super Bowl Sunday Weekend!

On Saturday, February 7th,, the local brewery that Dan and I frequent on our date nights, was having an IPA fest on Saturday.  As soon as we found out, Dan immediately texted Peter and he said he wanted to come home to attend with us.  Unbeknownst to us, until Friday night, they were also having a Jerry Garcia cover band playing all afternoon.  When I told Peter that, he was elated.  He's a huge Grateful Dead fan so this was icing on the beer cake!

The band was playing from 2:00 to 5:00 so we decided to get there right at 2 to make sure we got a spot.  HA!  It was already standing room only.  The bar had 13 of their own IPAs on tap and they had 14 guest taps with other IPAs from all over the country so a lot of people were there for the beer but I'd say more people were there for the band.  They were fabulous and I'm not even a big Grateful Dead fan.  

The band's name is Jerry's Dead and they are out of Asheville.  They sounded great and they just rolled from one song right into another. They didn't stop to talk between songs they just played.  And at the end of their set, they said they were going to play another so we ended up staying there until after 6:00.  It was such a great day!

And Sunday, our sweet Sarah came home to join us for Sunday lunch and to watch the Super Bowl with us.  Even though the Patriots lost, it was still awesome to watch the game with the family. I made my Pepper Jack Pimento Cheese toasts, a giant pretzel, candied kielbasa, and a fried pickle dip.  Here's the only picture we took:

Dan and Peter are wearing the Patriots sweatshirts they got from Dan's brother's family, for Christmas. We were hoping the sweatshirts would bring the Patriots good luck.  Oh well, there's always next season

and itt was such a great evening hanging out with my favorite people, watching football, and eating! 

And on a side note - my mom rescued two adorable kittens, and we cannot get enough of them.  They are so cute!  They were a mess when she got them but they are looking better and better every day.

Rest In Peace, Kitten

Our sweet Kitten, passed away on Wednesday.

She showed up at our door in July 0f 2010 as a tiny little kitten and has been with us ever since. For the last 15 and a half years, she was at my feet the minute they hit the floor in the morning to make sure I feed her immediately.  And when I would walk through door after being gone, she would be there to greet me like the good and faithful friend that she was.  And every evening, I could count on her sitting on my lap while I was watching tv.  And every night in bed, she was at my feet so that she could be right there in the morning to remind me it was breakfast time.

Knowing when to let a suffering pet go is never easy.  I am very thankful that Sarah was able to come home and go with me.  She loved Kitten as much as I did and I'm glad she got to say goodbye.  

She was the sweetest cat and we will miss her dearly.  

Rest easy, sweet girl.

Special thanks to Jennifer and Quinn for being so good to my sweet girl.

Christmas 2025

Merry Christmas!  Happy New Year!  Happy MLK Day!

Every post seems to start with me apologizing for the untimeliness of a blog post.  But it's a new year and I'm not going to apologize.  I'm busy with work and my kids aren't here in the house with me for daily content so my life is (thankfully) pretty dull.  This blog where I happily used to update several times a week, has sadly become just a spot for a quick update here and there and pictures of major holidays and family life events. And I'm okay with that.  

So without further ado...I present to you... Christmas 2025.

December was pretty busy for me.  Even though it is my slow time at work, I had plenty to do.  Which is nice because Dan has been travelling a lot.  I managed to work and get all the Christmas shopping done and I even decorated the tree by myself as you will recall from my last post. 

As Christmas approached, I realized that other than shopping for everyone on my list, I hadn't done anything "Christmasy".  I had done nothing fun or festive ahead of Christmas day, so I made a mental note to fix that next year.  A show, a party, a festival, a weekend trip somewhere special. Something...anything so that I can enjoy the time prior to the actual day itself.  Now if someone would just remind me of this in early November so I can make a plan, that would be great!

Sarah is in her Senior year of college, so she basically had a month off for winter break.  She came home for a day or two and then headed out to California with Joe and Noah to spend some time with Joe's cousin and aunt and uncle who live in Belgium but were visiting for Christmas.  Sarah had met all of them before and was excited to see them again as she really hit it off with them.  Here are a few pictures that she graciously texted the family chat during her trip...

The spent a little time in San Francisco and a little time in Lake Taho but most of the ten day trip was spent in Healdsburg. She had a lovely time!

Peter and his friends visited the Governor's Mansion one evening when it was open to the public and decorated for Christmas...

And he and his roommates hosted a Christmas party at their house.  Peter's a huge Grateful Dead fan, if you didn't know.

Now that he's a working man, he only got a little time off for Christmas so he didn't make it home until the evening of Christmas Eve.  Dan got home on the 23rd and Sarah got home from her travels on the 19th so it was very, very, very nice to have everyone home for a few days.  

On Christmas Eve, we attended the Christmas Eve Lovefeast service at the church I attended while I was growing up and afterwards came back to our house where we hosted our annual Christmas Eve Party.  Jennifer's family (minus Cheyanne who was in the Bahamas, lucky girl!), and my mom and brother, and Joe were all in attendance and we had the best time. And you know the drill...I didn't get any photos because I'm the worst.  Maybe next year I should designate someone as the photographer and have them go around all evening snapping photos.  

We were all slow to get up on Christmas morning.  Having older kids is nice.

Santa was very kind this year and left a bounty of good things.

I love and appreciate how the family puts on these Christmas pjs to humor me.  We first wore them in 2021.  We only wear them on Christmas Eve/Morning.  Who needs new Christmas pjs when you only wear them once a year?  Not us!

After we opened presents and enjoyed our morning coffee and a raspberry kringle from Trader Joe's, we speedily got ready and raced to Mass where we met Cathy.  After mass we came home and enjoyed lunch at Mom's with my brother, Cathy, Eric and our four.  It was a nice time and mom outdid herself on lunch as normal.  She had cataract surgery on both her eyes in December and wasn't feeling her best but she didn't let that show.  Her vision is much improved and she's thankfully, finally feeling back to her old self!

After lunch, we went home to relax a bit.  I cooked dinner and we watched Wake Up Dead Man which was the third movie in the Knives Out series.  It was really good and might be my favorite one yet.

On Friday, we headed to Seagrove, NC to visit some of the many pottery shops in the area.  We saw a lot of beautiful pottery and even made a couple of purchases.  On our way home, we stopped at the Town Creek Indian Mound. The visitor's center was closed but we visited the mound any way.  It wasn't locked so we just had a look around. Technically we probably shouldn't have been there but we didn't get caught so it's all good!  We had a bon fire after dinner.  The weather was perfect and it was a nice end to a nice day!

On Saturday we slept in as we were all tired.  Later that afternoon, we headed towards Charlotte.  We stopped in Kannopolis for Mass and drove through the town.  We got a picture of the kids in front of the Dale Earnhardt statue:

Then we had dinner in Concord and headed to the Charlotte Motor Speedway to see the Christmas lights. It was really a neat show.  You drive through the displays and at one point you are driving on bank of the race track.  That was really neat.  A large portion of the lights are synchronized to music on a certain radio station and that was very cool to see the lights coordinated with the music.  Then you park and there's a Christmas market with food and vendors and quite a few light displays to walk through.  Then you get back in your car and you head out through the concourse.  We parked and got a whole view of the speedway from the top of the concourse.  It was really a neat thing to do.  And because Sarah just finished her fellowship at the Speedway, she was able to get us free passes!  That was nice!!

After the lights, we headed to the ice cream shop that Sarah worked at before her fellowship (and I think she's planning on picking up shifts there this semester) and had ice cream.  Her manager was working and gave us a huge discount on our ice cream.  And gushed about how much he loved Sarah and how great of a worker she was.  So that was nice!  And their ice cream is delicious!!!!  

My pictures don't do it justice and of course I didn't even try to take pictures as we were driving through the displays.  I was just enjoying it all!

We got home pretty late and everyone went straight to bed.  But we were up early the next morning because Cathy and Eric were heading back to DC.  I had an MRI at 8:30 and Dan and Peter were headed to the Panthers game.  When I got back from my MRI, only Sarah was left at home.  But we didn't feel too bad that we didn't get to go to the game because we had tickets for a candle making workshop!

So while the boys were doing this:

It was so foggy during the game they couldn't even see the city in the background!

Sarah and I were doing this:

Why the weird face?  

We had so much fun.  We both made two candles.  We got to select our scents and we added colors and also botanicals at the end.  And of course, we got to enjoy an adult beverage while we were doing it.  It was so much fun and now we each have candles to burn.  I'm burning mine even as I'm typing this and it smells so good.  Word of warning though...the botanicals will flame up if you get too many of them in there.  

The next day was Monday and I had to work but on Tuesday, the four of us headed to Shelton Vineyards

in Dobson, NC.  What a treat that was!  We stopped for lunch in Winston-Salem at Xcaret which is a tasty Mexican restaurant before we headed to Dobson.

The grounds were lovely even in the middle of winter.  I'm sure in the spring and summer it would be even more beautiful.  There were a lot of people there, which was a good sign.  We perused the menu and each got a flight of wine.  The flights consisted of 4 half pours and we got to choose what we wanted from the reds and whites.  I'm not a wine aficionado but I thought their wines were delicious.  Their reserve Riesling was my favorite!

It was nice to go to a winery (and there are quite a few of them to choose from here in the Yadkin Valley) for a change of pace.  We go to a lot of breweries and drag Sarah along.  She's always a good sport so it was nice to do something that she definitely enjoyed!

And then I had to work the rest of the week because it was end of year and we always do inventory at the store.  Peter headed back to Raleigh on New Year's Eve and Sarah hung out with friends.  I had to work until 7:00 on New Year's Eve so Dan and I stayed home (I had to go to work the next day too) and had one fancy drink (It was a caramel drop martini!) and I was in bed before 10:30.  

And just like that, Christmas was over and it was back to ordinary life.  The kids are all back to their respective towns and lives and Dan and I are back to work.  

It was a great little holiday and once again, my favorite thing is spending time with my family.  We only had a week together, but I think we made the most of it!

Thanks for reading this little blog and following along with my long and sporadic posts! 

Happy MLK Day!