Weekend doings...

I would like to post about something of paramount importance here this morning (may the promised Limbo opinion?), but my brain is half frozen. The temperature in my office is only 45 degrees (F) this morning. My office has no heat, but on a sunny day, (once the sun is up, that is), the office heats up quite nicely due to the window's Southern exposure. But mornings and overcast days during the winter are tough. The office is small enough that the light bulb (being on) makes a huge difference. (In fact during summer days I make a point to keep the light off as the room will heat up too quickly.) Fortunately last winter my sister sent a fleece sweater, which along with a cap and Boston Red Sox throw blanket (thanks to brother) keeps me operating in the cold quite nicely. However, my fingers do freeze up a bit, making lots of typos inevitable. And sometimes my brain freezes a bit...

So instead of sharing my unlimited wisdom with the masses, I will simply comment on some weekend events and discussions....

Started teaching my boys how to play poker this weekend, (on Sunday no less - boy its great to be Catholic!). I figured they would learn how to play someday, and maybe if I could teach them some lessons now, they may not lose $37 in a half and hour in a nickel limit poker game as their Dad once did years ago...(That's another story, but it only happened once. Since then I became pretty conservative, if not pretyy good also at the game. Of course they will probably have to learn their hard lessons the hard way as most of us did. My Dad taught us how to play poker (and bridge). He never showed me High-Low however, and that was costly.)

Earlier in the morning-before Mass, the boys were feeding the animals and some sort of half playful-half serious dissension arose, resulting in a stick being tossed by one at another. Said stick opened bloody gash in the back of son's head. With 30 minutes to go before leaving for Mass, I was cleaning, patching, etc the wound. Of course head wounds will bleed. We ended up having to leave son and Mrs. Curley home due to said bleeding. It is under control now.

Continuing to move backwards (in time), Saturday night Mrs. Curley and I watched one of the Bing Crosby/Bob Hope "Road" movies which my sister had sent us on video. Road to Rio is the best of the lot-but one we don't have.

Much of Saturday afternoon was spent rejuvanating our fire pit in the back. It had been overgrown and we haven't used it this year. We found an tree stump, never removed, buried in the fire pit. (Don't know how we missed it last yer-oh yes, last year it was more of a fire mound than a firepit) We removed it and placed the logs from this tree around the pit. (Last year we have nothing substantial to sit on). We looking forward to using it now.

Saturday morning, our three oldest sons got up before dawn, completed their animal chores, and made breakfast: scrambled and fried eggs, biscuits, and fried turkey (leftovers from dinner a couple nights ago.) After breakfast Mrs. Curley and I volunteered to do the dishes since they had cooked so well. This was a big mistake. Mrs. Curley and I got into a discussion about Advent and Christmas (and the dangerous overlapping thereof) which dragged the kitchen cleanup out for several hours.

The discussion we had...

We have been trying to think of ways to keep Advent as Advent and to celebrate the Christmas season for the season and not just for one day. We have done a number of things over the years to do this. First we always get our tree December 17th or later. (Some years this has proved a major problem as many places are sold out. Other years it has been a boon as many places overstocked and you can get a great tree at a low, low price. From year to year, you never can predict.) Secondly, we have never made it a priority to open all the gifts under the tree on Christmas day. We have tried to learn Advent songs (the way we learn Christmas carols) and sing them during Advent and then sing Christmas carols starting on Christmas Eve and throughout the Christmas season. Last year we had a Christmas party for friends on the weekend closest to the traditional feast of the Ephiphany (as opposed to all the "Christmas parties" held during Advent) and will do so also this year.

This year we have decided to get our tree a bit earlier but to decorate it with purple ribbons only until the very close to Christmas. We are again, as we did last year, trying to make presents for other in the family instead of buying everything. (We have a "Dollar General" store in town-the only store in fact. The kids think it is the goldmine of all stores).

But there must be something more to move the focus from presents to Christ in more bold ways. We had some thoughts on this. We are going to further our discussion in the next couple days. If some good ideas come out, I will try to share them over the next few days...

From Bethany, the small holding in Bethune...Oremus pro invicem!