Weekend Rewind

Good morning! I'm working an 12 p.m to 8 p.m. shift today so the later start is giving me time to post and to get some chores done around the house. Tomorrow is my day off, but weather permitting, I'm hoping to go out to lunch with a friend and then there's Bible study in the evening.

This was a bit of a different Thanksgiving weekend for us because for the first time in my life, I had to work on the holiday. It was a day of mixed blessings at the nursing home. First, one of the other activity aides didn't show up (this after having called off her previous 4 or 5 shifts) so we were short-handed. The residents were all in a subdued, sleepy mood or else they were out for the day with family.

My supervisor wanted us to treat it like a normal day and do the regular morning routine and we did. A little. It was hard with the mood and the fact that they all wanted to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. We opted to try to do exercises, play a little holiday themed trivia and then let them watch the parade. My boss showed up to collect her mother-in-law, who I happened to be sitting and talking with while watching the parade, and yelled at me for having the television on. Sigh. Sometimes for a Christian woman she is not so nice.

We had a Thanksgiving Social in the afternoon with snacky types of food and we sang, played holiday trivia, and told what we were thankful for. It was very well received and a nice time.

Friday was our family Thanksgiving, minus our son and his family, but they never come home for Thanksgiving. They choose to celebrate it at home with some of his wife's family. We were invited the first year they were together, but never since. We miss them, but it works out okay as they usually come here at Easter and Christmas is a back and forth, shared holiday.

Friday was also the day the new power reclining love seat was delivered. We love it! Tim likes it so much he wants to get rid of our cruddy old sofa (that he's refused to give up for several years) and get a second one. I think we will probably use part of his Christmas bonus to make the purchase.

It was my weekend to work so not much else went on, though I finally got all the decorating done. Here's some of my handiwork...

I love my skinny, little alpine tree decorated in a (mostly) red and white woodland theme. My favorite thing is Hooty up there as the tree topper.

Several of the Santas in my collection were my aunt's. She gave them to my son before she died, but he's never really wanted them so mine they became.

More Santas (and a few snowmen). The Irish Santa is a recent and favorite addition.

This group are all Santas I've collected. A sign of the times...the Santa on the far left is taking a selfie. Our son is partial to the one in the yellow rain coat holding a lobster. He says it looks like the Gorton's fisherman. 

This is my Fisher Price Little People nativity. I have a good one, but this one is so stinking cute and I like that the kids can play with it. The nativity scavenger hunt has become a new Christmas tradition. When Colton is done playing I have to find all the pieces and you just never know where they are going to be. I'm pretty fanatical about keeping track because the older grands lost baby Jesus one year and it cost me $25 just to replace him! The whole set only costs something like $32 at Walmart so next time I'm just buying a whole new set and I'll have lots of spare parts.

I bought this ceramic tree at a garage sale a few years ago. It's about 2 ft tall and it's a pearly white with red bulbs and green bird bulbs. I loved it on sight and it only cost me $3! Over the the last couple of years I've managed to lose a couple of the bulbs. So I went online this year to find replacements and ended up buying (because they are inexpensive) a bag of 200 red bulbs, a bag of 200 green birds, and three yellow star toppers. The very same day they arrived, my mom gave me a bag of 20 rainbow colored replacement bulbs and another star topper. LOL  I didn't tell her I had bulbs to last forever already, but I did use her star on the top as it was bigger. 

Now I'm off to get dressed for work and to get a few things done before I have to go. Have a blessed day, friends!