Weekend Roundup

Wow! lots of things happened here, as I am sure everywhere else. Before Thanksgiving, I spent a couple days finding places to build storage areas (one thing we lack an abundance of here at Bethany). I found two places: one in the upper stairwell where I put some shelves; and on the hearth in the den, where I put up shelves/bookcase. I need to put some closet spaces in the eves, but that is a more intense project which we didn't have time for. Every year it seems I have a Thanksgiving week project. It has become somewhat of a tradition.

My sister arrived for her annual Thanksgiving visit on Wednesday. She has come every year we have been in SC except the first, when we traveled. Once again, it was a wonderful visit.

Thanksgiving day, besides my sister we had 2 friends from our parish share the meal and the day with us. But before we get to that, I must mention our annual Turkey Bowl.

This year, we had a new full time player on our team: my youngest son. (I think he played a bit last year, but not much.) So the teams were: numbers 1 and 2 sons versus myself and number 3 and 4 sons. This gave us the advantage of an extra player, but in return, our quarterback couldn't run. So it evened things out a bit. We also narrowed the field a little for two reasons. The 'out of bounds' used to be the driveway on one side and the cedar trees on the other. This made the field almost as wide as long. Running into the cedar trees is no fun, and running into the driveway is a potential knee problem as there is a drop-off at some points. (Confidentially, narrowing the field also helps an aging player like myself to have a better shot at stopping a long run by a teenage boy.)

Let's review a little history on the Turkey Bowl. It is a timed game, and as such is usually shorter than most of our games (as there is usually plenty to do on Thanksgiving morning). Can't say how many years we have played it, but it has been quite a few. My team won the first few years. Then we had a few years of ties. When we moved to Bethany, my team returned to its former glory and sneaked out a win two years ago. Then last year we were blown out (57-28). We didn't want that to happen again and had been practicing some new plays.

We took the early lead, but couldn't capitalize (my fault on two plays) on what should have been an easy score on our third possession (which would have put us up by 2 TD's early.) So by halftime we were down by 2 scores.

With 2 minutes left in the game, we were down 7-5 (or 49-35), but we had the ball on our opponents 5 yard line (2nd and goal). They stopped us 3 times, and then went on to score once more as we played a gambling defense. It was a close game with some good moments. Number 2 son made some spectacular catches he wouldn't have made in the past. Number 3 and number 4 son made some good runs.

Now back to the weekend: We had our usual turkey fair, but six deserts this year. Apple pie via son Matthew (absolutely delicious), pistachio pudding, cheesecake, pumpkin pie, a devils food cake/chocolate pudding/Irish creme extravaganza, and yum-yum bars. What a feast!

Saturday after my sister left, we had more friends over. We weren't sure we'd have enough turkey, so we quickly slaughtered two chickens and popped them in the oven. (How convenient!)

Sunday after Mass, we finally spent some time alone together winding down. We watched a movie with popcorn and played a game as a family.

So this morning it is back to work. The first thing I did was to go through email-deleting thousands of spam messages.

I hope everyone had as great a weekend as we did.

Our Lady of Joyful Hope-pray for us ... Oremus pro invicem!