7 Quick Takes Friday

(A new feature from Jen at Conversion Diary. Thanks, Jen!)

~1~

The pictures posted on Wordless Wednesday are from a jazz festival that Dan and his band were performing at last weekend. We had a fantastic time, the band is already booked for next year, and the little Heroes were angels during 10 hours of total drive time. (i.e. they slept for 8 of those hours.)

~2~

Bittyman is on track break. (He's in a year-round elementary school, which has 5 different schedules or 'tracks'. I know, crazy. Welcome to an overcrowded school system.) He's off the entire month of November. The name 'track break' is misleading. It's only a break for the teachers.

~3~

Scrabble is back on facebook. I made my first 7-letter word, 'armorer' on a triple word score space, for a whopping 95 points! (Hey, Jen didn't specify that these quick takes had to be particularly entertaining or thought-provoking.)

~4~

I haven't started my Christmas shopping. Usually I'd be halfway through my list by Thanksgiving. I may have a caroling gig Thanksgiving night from 11:30pm to 4am. (I've been a professional caroler with a group that dresses in Dickens-period costumes and sings in a capella quartets for the past 10 Christmas seasons.) If so I'll go directly from the gig to the craziness of the Black Friday sales and try to knock out all my shopping in one swoop of my Kohl's card.

~5~

I refuse to do any Christmas shopping at a store that doesn't acknowledge that it's Christmas. You can find the 2008 'Naughty & Nice' list of retailers here.

~6~

Why is the closest Cracker Barrel 85 miles from our house? We stopped at one driving back from the festival and I was in heaven. Homestyle cooking AND shopping! Oh, wait! I have purchased one Christmas gift. The Heroes spent 15 minutes playing with a toy parrot that repeats back everything you say to it in parrot voice. Just hilarious - especially when it repeated back Ittyboy's 19-month-old 'talk'. After loading the boys into the car, Dan ran back in and bought it.

~7~

The number one Google search term that lands on my blog is "Turkey Pinecone Craft." (How cute is 2 1/2 year-old Bittyman there?) We'll be doing it again next week and I'll post new pictures!